Comment by vcg3rd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vcg3rd | Hacker News Reader

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It's easy to see that driving on the RIGHT side of the road is a fit as a general mode of transportation. Adoption by millions is a testament to that.

It's easy to see that driving on the LEFT side of the road is a fit as a general mode of transportation. Adoption by millions is a testament to that.

Both statements are true. The author didn't say only C++ is fit. Nor did he say a program written in BOTH C++ AND python (i.e. a system of driving on both left and right sides of the road) is fit.

The counter-argument (C++ is NOT fit as a general purpose programming language) is invalidated by millions of programmers who use it as such in the same way that thumbs are not fit for grasping is invalidated by, well, grasping with your hands.

It doesn't mean pliers are not fit for grasping just because thumbs are fit for grasping.

You're conflating types of evidence and types of arguments.

No. I'm not saying that C++ is not fit as a general purpose programming language. It very well may be. All I'm saying is that "adoption by millions is a testament to [the fitness of C++]" is not a valid argument. If it were, "adoption by millions is a testament to truth of [objective religious claim X]" would be a valid argument, and it manifestly isn't because different religions make mutually exclusive objective claims.

"adoption of X is a testament that it is fit for purpose" and "adoption of X is a testament of truth" are two incredibly different things.

The equivalent statement would be that "adoption by millions is a testament to the viability of X as a cohesive religion".

"Fitness as a general purpose programming language" is (at least in part) an objective claim. If a million people professed to believe that, say, brainfuck was fit as a general purpose programming language that in and of itself would not make it so. This is not the case for being a cohesive religion. If a million people profess to believe some religious belief, that in and of itself is sufficient for that belief to be a cohesive religion.

> If a million people professed to believe that, say, brainfuck was fit as a general purpose programming language that in and of itself would not make it so.

No, but if millions of people actually did manage to use Brainfuck for general purpose programming, then that would be evidence that it really is fit as a general purpose programming language, even if it's not ideal.

Brainfuck isn't in that position, hence no one thinks it's fit, but C++ is. People do use it for general purpose programming, even if their program could be rewritten in a garbage-collected language.

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