People don't RTFM, much less the F****** Spec. Architectures that don't support the "principle of least surprise" are going to be fragile, no matter how logical and consistent their other principles might be.
Confusion IS a danger in itself, as various spacecraft lost for want of a comma, or misunderstandings of units of measurement, can attest.
--Mike Champion on the Xml-Dev mailing list, Thu, 25 Jul 2002