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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

I can buy that I guess.

Probably the main philosophical disagreement I have with the article is summed up by (and probably the rest of the article was tainted by) the opening line:

> I was searching around for a quote along the lines of you only being as good as the tools you use

I personally (fully aware it's a quirk of mine that others don't seem to share) feel that fancy tools are often a crutch for a lack of understanding.

Granted, this guy looks to have a long list of accomplishments, so good for him for wanting a fancy set up. If it brings him joy then more power to him.

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I feel you, In several areas of my life (computers, stereo, photography, old truck, etc) I go overboard in building whatever it is I’m working on not because I strictly need that amazingness but because I enjoy having constructed it and the feel of using a fine instrument.

Building and using it sparks joy.

I also am irked by people who buy and use amazing things and display said amazing thing from a position of “I am amazing therefore I need amazing things” or vice versa. I dunno, it seems really inauthentic or something. I’m getting a little of that vibe from this article but OTOH I’m also getting a lot of the “Building and using great instruments sparks joy” vibe too and I think the former may just be coming across by virtue of writing a blog post to share the latter so, oh well :)

I've always felt you are only as good as you are when your tools are taken away.

I think it's bad to let your tools become a crutch to avoid gaining a deeper understanding.

That being said, if you take a software developer's CPU away what are they supposed to do - build their own foundry? Same for electrical engineers - can they really be faulted for an inability to design a modern chip without the help of extensive tooling?

(I'm certainly nowhere near being capable of implementing my own C++ compiler from scratch.)

> I'm certainly nowhere near being capable of implementing my own C++ compiler from scratch.

It's not that bad. A couple months and you're good to go.

I doubt even you would be that keen to write a C++17 compiler from scratch :P

For context, the person you replied to is the author of the D language.

I did write a C++98 compiler from scratch. I then was consumed by writing a D compiler, but the later C++ versions aren't hard from a compiler perspective.

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