On Dec 2, 2011, at 3:45 PM, Dmitrij Czarkoff wrote: > On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 9:09 PM, David Riley <fraveyd...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Dec 1, 2011, at 2:39 PM, Dmitrij Czarkoff wrote: >> >>> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 4:25 PM, John Tate <j...@johntate.org> wrote: >>>> I'm 24 years old. I was a Linux hacker since I was 13. >>>> <...> >>>> At 13 I didn't just start learning Linux I started learning C++ as well. >>> >>> Are You sure? You wrote C++ Linux kernel code in 2000? Really? >> >> To be fair, he didn't say that. > > Being an XYZ hacker means programming XYZ in non-trivial, advanced > ways, doesn't it? As he only mentioned C++, I assume that he only knew > C++ by then. So, if the only programming language he knew was C++ and > he programmed Linux, I conclude that he did his Linux hacking in C++. > Where am I wrong?
I guess I'm running on the assumption that since C++ is a superset of C (with caveats, of course, some of which are why they're not Linus' preference for the kernel), one has to know C before knowing C++ (or at least as a product of knowing it). That, of course, does not mean one is *good* at C; I've seen plenty of people crippled in writing straight procedural code because they never bothered to learn how to do it right. The other inference you could make is that he already knew C when he started "hacking Linux" and started learning C++ at the same time. That's the conclusion I drew. You could easily draw both conclusions, I guess, since the wording was a smidge ambiguous. - Dave