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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

But then, on that page, explain that the author wasn't happy with Git and wrote their own. It's as if I post an article on why LibreOffice is better than Microsoft Word and it turns out I'm the founder of LibreOffice or something. Of course I'd think it's better and of course I know just the right things to mention to convince everyone, because I was there to build them or check them in.

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I am reminded of an open letter / post from many years ago. Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language https://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html .

> There is no significant way in which I found Pascal superior to C, but there are several places where it is a clear improvement over Ratfor. Most obvious by far is recursion: several programs are much cleaner when written recursively, notably the pattern-search, quicksort, and expression evaluation.

While the author goes about comparing Pascal to C (and Ratfor), he fails to disclose his affiliation with being the author of C.

"Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" is an article by Brian Kernighan. Kernighan didn't create C. Dennis Ritchie did. And between Ken Thompson, Kernighan, and Ritchie, Kernighan had the least to do with the creation of C.

What Kernighan did do is write the book on C. (You might argue that it's a conflict of interest, too, but it's not. It makes a lot of sense that someone would like a programming language so much that they'd decide to write a book on it.)

It seems perfectly reasonable for someone who created an alternative to explain why they did it. Maybe the page should be titled "Why sqlite dev(s) created Fossil", but it certainly doesn't come across as disingenuous to me.

They don't mention it. At all.

Because they don't want to come across as pushing their own product, I guess. I saw a recorded talk by the Fossil creator a couple of days ago where he talked specifically about git and how it could be improved. He was extremely reluctant to name Fossil explicitly, although he stated upfront that he has developed similar software.

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