[AtlasBarfed]

1) were C programmers "better"? In sum total, pretty much.

2) C programs, at least the ones we use now, are a product of a lot of use and debugging

3) It didn't take too many debugging sessions as a C programmer to learn to program a bit more carefully.

4) and the more it gets used, the more error codes it encounters, and the more robust the handling gets. I think a dirty secret of software engineering isn't that the most complicated/heavily used code gets the most and most useful comments, it's that it also get the most error handling/detection code, and for the vast majority of non-core loop code: error handling ..isn't.

[wiseowise]

> were C programmers "better"? In sum total, pretty much

No. Original programmers that just happened to use C were better, not the other way around.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

I disagree. The early adopters are usually exceptional. When adoption grows the average level decreases. This is a well known phenomenon which is larger than just programmers. It was even on HN recently, as applied to IQs in high schools over time: as more kids reach high school, the average decreases.

So yes. C programmers were better.

[wiseowise]

You’re literally proving my point and then summarizing with different conclusion.

They were exceptional because they were exceptional, not because they were C developers.