Interesting.  It's fine either way.

I'd like to pick your brain though - I know there are a lot of "defensive coding" techniques such as this where you're basically building for the lowest common denominator.  I know that sometimes that's just the most practical way to do things, depending on the team that you're working with.  But I also tend to prefer better code over defensive code where possible.

Curious what your thoughts are on that.  Again this is a ridiculously minor thing, but I'm curious since you have a lot of experience as a Magento dev and now at AOE.