wdporter

The ff in sufficient indicates a short vowel sound for the "u". The single f in deficient indicates a long vowel sound for the "e". Hence, suff-icient and dee-ficient. At least, that's how we pronounce it where I'm from.

My theory is that the only reason we need indigestible carbohydrate is to push out the indigestible carbohydrate that is already stuck in the colon. Therefore we need it either all the time or not at all. Does this make sense?

I think he might mean it does not fully prove anything. Is the dash an awkward attempt at a pun?

Easy on windows: press and hold the alt key, and then 0151 on the numeric keypad.

If you're on windows and have a numeric keypad, it's alt-0150.

alt-0151 (numeric keypad) on windows

Some other useful ones to memorise:

0150 the endash, 0133 the ellipsis, 0145 the single quote opening, 0146 the apostrophe/single quote closing, 0147 and 0148 for double quotes, 0149 for a bullet point.

true, perhaps, but a colon would have been more appropriate here and programmers should be familiar enough with them also.

Agreed. Good typography is good writing.

I probably shouldn’t presume to speak for the OP, but given that they’re optional, I would think so, yes.