Henry Hagnäs

And so continues one of the biggest constants in software development: the unerring sense among developers that the level of abstraction they're current working at is exactly the right one for the task at hand. Anything lower-level is seen as barbaric, and anything higher-level is a bloated, slow waste of resources. This remains true even as the overall level of abstraction across the industry marches ever higher.

First the C guys can't imagine writing in assembly anymore, but C++'s vtable dispatch is still just too slow to consider. Then the C++ guys look back with chagrin at the bad-old-days of rolling their own half-assed object systems in C, but Java is dismissed as a ridiculous pig. Still later, the Java guys sneer at pointers and manual memory management, but JavaScript is ridiculed as a toy "scripting" language for validating web forms. And on and on.

....

Once again, let me anticipate your likely reaction. "Don't try to frighten us with your technological worries. Microsoft's sad devotion to its modern, multi-language runtime has not helped it conjure up some decent mobile market share, or given it clairvoyance enough to dominate any product category outside its core Windows/Office strengths." All of this is true. Successfully addressing a technical issue like this is not a guarantee of success, nor is being a bit behind in this area a death sentence.

John Siracusa at his best! I love the original stuff on Ars Technica, thought-provoking, interesting, funny and well-written. Unfortunately there are only so many John Siracusa's and Jon Stokes around and Ars needs to get pageviews after "selling out". Which means they are more or less copying Engadget, TechCrunch et al with similar, superficial, stories and "news".