> What the hell does "power level 9000" even mean for a programming language?

Power level 9000 is a reference to Dragon Ball Z. I haven't watched it but I gather it's up there on the power scale.

I think the analogy makes sense. Sometimes it is better to take a car than a Cessna or a jet, so it doesn't necessarily fail as you think it does.

The analogy might "make sense" but it's not useful. All it does is drive discussion towards arguments framed in the context of the analogy. Except we're not talking about public transportation! We're talking about programs! Points about "roads are everywhere" and "Are you driving across the Pacific?" are just snark.

As an example, let's take this quote:

> So yeah, Go will get you there. It will take you a lot longer to get there when you aren't going 600MPH, and you can carry a lot less people, but at least you aren't driving a car like the people using Python.

If Go was the name of a Cessna, C++ the name of a commercial airliner, and Python the name of a car, then that statement might make _some_ sense. But no, they're programming languages and you can't just throw this analogy out there and then try to have a serious discussion based on it.

Sometimes a Go program performs faster than a C++ or Rust program, and is written in less time. For certain domains, you might get something working (and performing faster) in less time in Python than writing it in Go. Python (and others) can call out to C libraries. Oh, I don't recall your car being able to summon a commercial airliner to pick it up in the middle of highway traffic. But that's how you'd have to explain FFI in this make-believe world of programming language cars.

All metaphors and analogies break down. No need to get pedantic about it.