I enjoy “falsehood programmers believe” articles for the same reason as Graham Lee, who also points out that I shouldn’t assume others approach those articles (or any seemingly common structure) the same:

As the sort of programmer who writes falsehoods programmers believe articles , my belief is that interesting challenges to my beliefs will trigger some curiosity, and lead me to research the counterexamples and solutions. Or at least, to file away the fact that counterexamples exist until I need it, or am otherwise more motivated to learn about it.

But that motivation is not universal. The fact that I treat it as universal turns it into a falsehood I believe about readers of falsehoods articles. Complaints abound that falsehoods articles do not lead directly to fish on the plate . Some readers want a clear breakdown from “thing you might think is true but isn’t true” to “Javascript you can paste in your project to account for it not being true”. These people are not well-served by falsehoods articles.