Thanks for illuminating this complicated issue! It's so common to blurt slogans and deny subtlety.<p>Anecdote: The first (and last) episode of MythBusters I watched pretended to prove you couldn't start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Proceeded to make an ignorant hash of it, tried to create a bow etc but used it upside-down and so on. Conclusion: Myth! You can't start a fire with sticks.<p>Except, my 12-year-old Boy Scouts do it all the time. For fun.<p>When somebody says "That tool is crap", good to consider the source.
I skimmed thru the post, and did not find the arguments convincing. For instance, the example seems to be watered down from the Linux mmap man page. Thus it appears that awareness of mmap and it's man page makes one a "C ace"!