Author of the rule and post here. I reread the post this morning, and I agree that I should have been less definitive in that sentence. But I stand by the broader point: Useless code is generally not something developers intend to write. When we do, it's generally something exceptional, so a lint suppression is a reasonable way to clarify "I meant to do that". And in the common case where it was an error, the lint rule proves quite helpful.

I hope the take away for the reader is: If you can think of other rules that will detect useless code, you should pursue them, because they are likely more valuable than just enabling dead code elimination. They have a high probability of being able to uncover interesting bugs/mistakes as well, which is much more valuable.