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Comment by avmich | Hacker News Reader

To me it feels like the difference in positions is "this could be made better" vs. "but this is already so much better than before". Both are right.

Maybe I'm missing something important so far...

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I was thinking the same. RISC-V is certainly impressive and I'm glad we have it, but the original article isn't wrong in its complaints either.

It definitely could have gone with a less abrasive tone (as entertaining as it is), so it's no wonder it's getting some pushback.

At least for me, I agree with both of the things you said. RISCV is a significant improvement on a lot of of the status quo in situations where it is currently getting design wins. But it also could’ve been a lot better in simple ways that should have been thought of.

> the difference in positions is "this could be made better" vs. "but this is already so much better than before"

I would say "this could be technically better" vs. "this is already economically better than anything else"

Maybe. I'm not sure if the original author's intent was to say how risc-v could be better or to say it is bad and people should use other (proprietary) ISAs instead.

It's more of the former.

Before this, the author has never recommended others stay away from RISC-V, just stated their own distaste for it and a personal preference to use any other ISA if given a choice.

I am sorry if my point was not clear enough. I don’t advise anybody to stay away from it. In many ways it is good enough.

I just think that if you were designing something from scratch, you could actually learn from past lessons, rather than publishing a document saying you learned, and then demonstrating conclusively that you didn’t.

Yeah the complaints in the original article are valid, but it's like complaints about Android or iOS. There are plenty of valid complaints against either, but neither is strictly better than the other.

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