There are two blog posts here, both interesting, but not deeply connected. One is about false proxies, which is specifically about people manipulating perceptions.
The other is about getting "measurably better cheese" but not understanding why it's measurably better. Speed is not a proxy for speed, it's just speed. The meme here is that correlation does not equal causation.
The point is speed is a false proxy for the quality of Node.js.
Well, no, speed is the actual measure of interest. The point is that reimplementations that change language also often change other design features, and that without knowing what else changed one cannot validate the attribution of the post-change speed improvement to Node.js.
Comments
Yes!
There are two blog posts here, both interesting, but not deeply connected. One is about false proxies, which is specifically about people manipulating perceptions.
The other is about getting "measurably better cheese" but not understanding why it's measurably better. Speed is not a proxy for speed, it's just speed. The meme here is that correlation does not equal causation.
The point is speed is a false proxy for the quality of Node.js. The results don't necessarily justify using it for everything going forward.
Well, no, speed is the actual measure of interest. The point is that reimplementations that change language also often change other design features, and that without knowing what else changed one cannot validate the attribution of the post-change speed improvement to Node.js.
I think we're saying the same thing :)