Nice ad hominem you've got there. Was it directed at me, or my interlocutors? If it was directed at me, it's not only a fallacy but based on a false premise, as I've worked on seven UNIX kernels plus NT since 1989. That includes HA systems, FT systems, supercomputers, etc. so I don't think one can reasonably say I haven't dealt with some complexity before. Maybe we should delve into your experience to see if you know what you're talking about . . . but no, that would be just as fallacious.

There have been some good comments in this thread, but the only "noise" is from those who haven't even tried to present an argument one way or the other. I get that some people would draw the lines between good vs. bad use of typedefs differently than I would. I'm OK with that, as long as there's some kind of rational decision process behind it. The problem is that often there doesn't seem to be. Aesthetic concerns or the trivial difficulty of getting from the typedef to the underlying type do not, in my opinion, stand against the proven benefits of modularity or robust type checking.