Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikebenfield | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I understand that. But if he really didn't care much about programming languages, why wouldn't he just use C++, which he was allowed to use in production?

View on HN

Rich was a professor of an advanced C++ class (at NYU, I think) in the late 90s, and wrote a very popular paper on how to get some killer performance out of that language. He's been around the block and knows a thing or two about these things.

I don't understand how this is a reply to my comment.

He talks about that quite a few times in the video.

Yes, and the things he says about it indicate he does think programming languages are important.

I think there may be a bit of people talking past each other here. I think one can reasonably say that which language one uses isn't as important as which features that language has. Also, there comment you originally responded says "that programming languages (including his own) are the most important aspect of doing our programming work well." That doesn't mean that the language or its features aren't important. They're saying that it's not the most important thing.

The hierarchy Rich refers to[0] puts domain complexity and misconception as 10× more important than anything that's language specific. I believe this is the basis of the quote I pulled. I think this is compatible with thinking that language features are important, but domain complexity and misconception are more important issues when tackling a problem with code.

[0]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com