Redleg, I agree with you.
I greatly prefer pistols with manual slide locks. Otherwise, I have to unload a magazine to lock the slide open after supposedly clearing the chamber since I'm a coward about sticking my pinky in front of the "ready to slam home" slide and a coward about depending on a brief glimpse at the chamber while holding the slide open.
I'm also a coward about trusting loaded chamber indicators or trusting a gun to stay unloaded if it ever gets out of my sight once I've absolutely determined that it's unloaded. I've had too many "lost" items turn up right where I'd been diligently looking a few minutes earlier to not believe that inanimate things sneak around when I'm not looking.
They don't call these things autoloaders for nothing you know!