[SPBS]

> Early in the development process, when testing the incomplete application, I remembered that Subversion (the version control system after CVS, before Git) had a –dry-run option.

> I remembered how helpful that was, so I decided to add it to my command as well.

He mentions the reason he added it, and it's a compelling enough story to be true.

[dabedee]

Of course and I am not trying to point fingers. But I do think it's interesting because it's also possible that it is confabulation. Not lying, but genuinely constructing coherent explanations for decisions whose true origins are different than we recall. I think working with coding agents has already made this immensely more common.

[mpyne]

I had the equivalent of --dry-run in my kdecvs-build script from 2003 (where it was called --pretend) so it's not that spontaneous an idea that it must have been dreamed up by an AI.

Any time you have a script that needs to run for a long time or might involve destructive actions, having a way to run the script in a "tell me what you would do without actually doing it" mode is a fairly obvious user story to throw in.