[hluska]

The entire sentence is:

“I'm not God's gift to the field, but I am clearly better than most of my competition - that is, practitioners like myself who haven't put in the reps to build their own C libraries in a cave with scraps, but can read textbooks and use libraries written by elite institutions.“

It’s quite poorly written, but they note they’re clearly better than most of their competition.

[smoothbenny]

> they note they’re clearly better than most of their competition.

Yup, I've noted that three times. Are we still claiming he wrote libraries in C in a cave with scraps? Or just moving on?

Poorly written? Maybe. Poorly read? Equally likely. Maybe we should just ask the guy, he'll know.

Did the downvoter see me as their "competition"? "Clearly better"? Both? I don't have enough karma yet to respond in kind, so they're right about something at least.

lol they did it again. mods!

[jsnell]

The section starts with him bragging about having written libraries from scratch. Given that, I really don't understand how you can arrive at them considering themselves one of the people who hasn't written libraries.

[smoothbenny]

> I really don't understand how you can arrive at them considering themselves one of the people who hasn't written libraries.

There seems to be a comprehension issue on one side or the other. Can someone point me to where he says his competition has never written a single library? I only see that he says they haven't written a library "in C in a cave with scraps". Where does he say he's written libraries in C? I don't see that either. Maybe the words "scraps" and "scratch" are too close together? If a subset of readers are inclined to dismiss him out of hand for this perceived slight, nothing I write will convince them otherwise, but that doesn't make their uncharitable interpretation of his words the correct one.

[jsnell]

Yes, there is a comprehension issue here. Everyone else understood this as a discussion on whether the author is being arrogant and dismissive in this section. You seem to be looking for a discussion on whether anyone really writes C libraries in a cave with scraps.

Nobody here but you is taking the "cave" and "scraps" literally. It'd be total nonsense if taken literally. Like, what would it even mean? It's obviously the author trying to make their writing punchy. You should not take it any more seriously than their threats to snap people's necks for talking about AI.

If you want to ignore than actual discussion and steer it toward a discussion of an interpretation of the text that's so literal that the text doesn't even make sense, you should probably be very explicit about it.

[smoothbenny]

No one's discussing whether he's arrogant or not, they've all made up their minds. I gave an alternate, more charitable interpretation of his words, that would offer an otherwise offended reader a way to reframe the blog, and not dismiss it out-of-hand if they took his words as a slight. I believe this interpretation.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

:)