Compiler warnings are a Bad Thing

Most projects I've worked on contained a sizeable number of compiler warnings. These are usually ignored by developers as being unimportant. So there are a few (dozen) variables defined that are never used - so what? Duplicate 'using' statements - that can't hurt anything...

It's true that some warnings are mostly harmless. The problem is that these warnings often hide other, more important ones. A few serious ones that come to mind:

- Unreachable code. Perhaps there's a return statement halfway through a function. Or a conditional that will always evaluate true (or false.) These often have unintended side effects.

- A variable is never assigned to, and will always have a default value. You've created a variable, foo, that you're using in your code, perhaps in a method call or conditional. The problem is, you never set foo to anything. It's possible the variable should be removed or replaced with a constant. But it's also possible you forgot to retrieve or calculate something.

- A class member hides an inherited member. Maybe you intended to replace it with your own. In that case, use 'new' to explicitly document the desired effect. If hiding was unintentional, you're better off renaming the member. Otherwise, you may later decide you need that hidden item. At which point you end up with a bit of code rework.