Hey no problem, just add -Werror to your compiler flags (C/C++/Java) or '<TreatWarningsAsErrors>true</TreatWarningsAsErrors>' to your csproj (C#).

This! Treat every warning as a failure, ideally in your CI system so people can't forget, and this problem (ignoring warnings..) goes away.

You will have a better, more reliable, and safer codebase once you clean up the legacy mess and turn this on..

I agree. Having worked in a project with warnings as errors on (c++) I found it annoying at first but it made me a better coder in the long run.

Plus you get out of the habit of not reading output from the compiler because there are so many warnings...

Unless you follow a zero warning policy they are almost useless. If you have a warning that should be ignored add a pragma disable to that file. Or disable that type of warning if it's too spammy for your project.