"The article" is ambiguous. The one this HN post is about does not argue for it, at all. But the one in the comment above directly says,

> Don’t use stream (<iostream>, <stringstream>, etc.), use printf style functions instead.

and has a code example of what they argue 'Orthodox C++' should be, which uses printf.

I'm all for a more sensible or understandable C++, but not at the expense of losing safety. In fact I would prefer the other way: I still feel incredibly saddened that Sean Baxter's Circle proposal for Safe C++ is not where the language is heading. That, plus some deep rethinking and trimming of some of the worst edge behaviours, and a neater standard library, would be incredible.