Are you sure you want to read this post?

You've been working on your TPS Report for hours, but you've finally finished. All too eagerly, you go to close Microsoft Word. A dialog pops up with a question:

Phew! That was close. Good thing you were warned, otherwise you would have just closed Word and lost all the changes since the last time you saved. You click "Yes", and your work is saved.

One can see, from this example, how useful confirmation messages can be. Before performing an action that could potentially ruin your day, most applications are kind enough to say, "Hey buddy, are you sure you want to do that?". This is a Good Thing.

Some applications, however, take this to a level that is beyond helpful and approaching madness. It's almost as if some programmers love dialog boxes so much that they make sure to insert one whenever they can. I once used an application that, when I added a new row to a table I was editing, it asked me, "Are you sure you want to add a new row?". Phew! That was close. Good thing I was warned, otherwise I might have to then remove the newly-added row (undoubtedly with another confirmation message) to undo that particularly disastrous change.

Exaggerated examples aside, you don't really need to get confirmation from your user if the action he is about to perform has no ill or destructive effects. If I add a new row to a table, what's the big deal? Just add it. If I realize that I mistakenly added an extra row, I can just delete the extra row. No harm done. On the same note, removing an empty table row that I just added probably won't destroy anything I've done.