If you don't hedge your statements about programming, you will invariably be wrong. There are always counter-examples.
The kind of ambiguity and side-effects I'm alluding to are ones programming languages explicitly support and encourage, like overloaded operators and overloaded methods in C++. In C, the effects of a segment of code are comparatively predictable just by looking at the code itself. In quite a large number of languages, you can't draw many conclusions about what a segment of code does without looking in multiple other places.
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...almost no room for ambiguity and subtle, invisible side effects. What you see is what you get. [emphasis mine]
The key word there is "almost." C does have lots of undefined behaviors.
If you don't hedge your statements about programming, you will invariably be wrong. There are always counter-examples.
The kind of ambiguity and side-effects I'm alluding to are ones programming languages explicitly support and encourage, like overloaded operators and overloaded methods in C++. In C, the effects of a segment of code are comparatively predictable just by looking at the code itself. In quite a large number of languages, you can't draw many conclusions about what a segment of code does without looking in multiple other places.