::: {.Section1} [Peter Coffee’s pre-PDC column correctly points out that truly compelling apps such as eBay, Google, and videogames are built, not in the abstract realms of virtual machines but with painstaking attention to hardware capabilities. This is one reason why [knowing C++ is the most important qualification for those wishing to be professional programmers]{style="font-weight:bold"}. Peter hooks this observation to the abstraction of Indigo / Windows Communication Foundation, which I think is a bit of a conflation – I don’t really see the software abstraction of Indigo being the same thing as the hardware abstraction of .NET / Java. But as always, worth reading.]{style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial"} :::