[lolc]

To me "bad programmers can write bad code in any language" is a snarky critique on favoring laws over conventions. There is this hope that given strong laws (safeguards), collaborating with unreasonable people is easier. Then the discussion devolves into the use of dangerous features versus the need to work with unreasonable people.

In my view, the discussion should be about comfort. At what abstraction levels will we work? If you put in a lot of safeguards, you can work comfortably at a certain level. But if you want to move out of this band, be it to write some low-level glue-code, or some higher abstractions, you find the safeguards to be a barrier. If those safeguards are conventions, you can agree to break them, if they are laws, you must subvert them or not work at those levels.

I prefer conventions as much as I prefer working with reasonable people. And sometimes turning conventions into law has few downsides, like with the private keyword.