I'm totally fine with the word itself, but not with overuse of it or placing it where it clearly doesn't belong. And I did that a lot, I think. I suspect if you reviewed my HN comments, it's littered with 'actually' a ton. Also "I think...", "I feel like..." and other kind of... Passive, redundant, unnecessary noise.
Like, no kidding I think the thing I'm expressing. Why state that?
Another problem with "actually" is that it can seem condescending or unnecessarily contradictory. While I'm often trying to fluff up prose to soften disagreement (not a great habit), I'm inadvertently making it seem more off-putting than direct yet kind statements would. It can seem to attempt to shift authority to the speaker, if somewhat implicitly. Rather than stating that you disagree along with what you believe or adding information to discourse, you're suggesting that what you're saying somehow deviates from what the person you're speaking to would otherwise believe or expect. That's kind of weird to do, in my opinion. I'm very guilty of it, though I never had the intent of coming across this way.
It can also seem kind of re-directive or evasive at times, like you don't want to get to the point, or you want to avoid the cost of disagreement. It's often used to hedge statements that shouldn't be hedged. This is mainly what led me to realize I should use it less. I hedge just about everything I say rather than simply state it and own it. When you're a hedger and you embed the odd 'actually' in there, you get a weird mix of evasive or contradictory hedging going on. That's poor and indirect communication.
One reason might be to acknowledge that you're not being prescriptive, but leaving room for a subjective POV in situations that call for it.
Likewise, the GP's use of "actually" acknowledges the contrast between what one might expect (that some preliminary type-checking might happen during initial parsing) and what in fact happens (no type checks occur until the template is used.) It doesn't seem out of line in that case.
I agree but it's not always clear whether you're stating an opinion or attempting to state a fact. Some folks would reply to a comment like this with "citation needed" but wouldn't otherwise have said that if the comment had opened with "I think."
"The body of the template is parsed, but, contrary to popular belief, not actually type-checked until the template is used."
One can omit the "contrary to popular belief", but the "actually" would still need to stay, as it hints at the "contrary to popular belief".
It's not as simple as "it's not needed there".
The lack of recognition of perceived Noise as an actual part of the Signal, eventually destroys the Signal.
Lately "I mean" has been jumping out at me.
It really only bothers me when I notice I've used it for multiple comments in the same thread or, worse, multiple times in the same comment.
I've also pretty much dropped just from my vocabulary when I'm talking about an alternative way to do something.