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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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