Comment by socialdemocrat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by socialdemocrat | Hacker News Reader

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Just commenting here as the author. Don't call people liars. Being wrong about something and lying are two very different things. I was writing that intro based on recalling Andrew Kelley stating in a video that he had been advised against running code at compile time by several people. I could not recall if he ever said explicitly who that was. It was an off-hand comment.

I choose to par-phrase him, and had no idea that this would get anyone this upset and lead to me being accused of being a liar. How much of experts these people where I cannot vouch for. Maybe they were second rate language designers or maybe Kelley referred to older papers advising against it.

Either way I cannot find the exact video anywhere where he made this remark despite looking through several. Does it really matter? Can you say for a fact that no language designer expert ever told Andrew Kelley this? I am not claim this is the general opinion among designers, only that this is what Andrew got told.

If anyone has the correct quote, I'll be happy to update the article.

As much as I despise P5fRxh5kUvp2th's personal attacks on you (personal attacks have no place in a civilized forum and the uncivil behavior of P5fRxh5kUvp2th should be condemned), I do feel tempted to point out that your responses do not restore any confidence in your article for readers like me. Some problems I see in your counterpoints.

> I was writing that intro based on recalling Andrew Kelley stating in a video

When you are writing for a technical crowd, it is good to be prepared with references and evidence. Unsourced information is likely to be questioned. Unsourced information making dubious claims that go against half a century of computer programming and practice is even more likely to be questioned.

> Can you say for a fact that no language designer expert ever told Andrew Kelley this?

That's not a valid counter-argument. Can you say for a fact that Russell's teapot does not exist? That does not make the existence of Russell's teapot any more likely! The burden of proof lies on you to show that the bold claim you made in your article holds up against scrutiny.

It isn’t a claim about the capabilities or features of Zig or any other language. I don’t see how it makes a big difference to the the reader. We are talking about the exact wording was of those advising Andrew to not do comptime and their exact position. I feel this a bikeshedding.

Making this into a huge topic that requires evidence and citations seems a bit over the top. I would say you guys don’t know how journalism works. You equate article writing with scientific journals and papers. They are not the same thing.

I think what is at the core is getting the language description correct.

Here is at least one thing that Andrew said:

> There are a lot of people in this thread saying that I said stuff I didn't say. It's maddening.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33107359

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