This man is a wizard. You can also thank him for ffmpeg and qemu. A company I worked for once tried to hire him as a consultant because he had implemented an LTE BTS in software. Is there anything he hasn't done? EDIT: tombert beat me to it[0] by a couple minutes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413498
yes! he has been one of my favorite programmers over all these years. so happy that he continues to dispel the 10x programmer myth. at least, as far as i am concerned. we should all take note. it's less about productivity but more about focus and hard work. this project seems to have started in 2017. from a quick glance at the code, they used c (his favorite language) -- which by the way people are still there convin…
QuickJS JavaScript Engine
161–170 of 279 posts
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#162Is there anything that Fabrice can't do? I mean, FFMpeg is almost a PhD thesis in and of itself, and he still manages to find time to make TinyC, QEMU, and now this. To say I'm jealous of his skills would be an understatement.
You forgot LZEXE...
The second project of his that I came across was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellard%27s_formula and his page on π: https://bellard.org/pi/
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's C so it's harder to tell than other languages, since it doesn't have separate namespaces for everything. You can just write a bunch of functions and global variables in separate files and then act like they're all in the same file, and there's really no difference.
You could, but I'm not seeing any code duplication across files so that would mean that he's not included the files that make up the "mega file", which would be rather strange.
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#164quickjs.c is a 47,842 line C file. I think that sets the record for the largest handwritten file I've seen.
Although decomposition into corresponding files is the norm, it’s so satisfying to say “hey, check out my JS engine” and point people to a single work-of-art uberfile. LOL.
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although decomposition into corresponding files is the norm, it’s so satisfying to say “hey, check out my JS engine” and point people to a single work-of-art uberfile. LOL.
" Don't be snarky. " " Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#166How does one keep track of Fabrice Bellard's work? I couldn't find a Twitter profile, GitHub profile, or RSS feed from his website.
https://bellard.org/projects.html
He's got over 40 projects in total there, and each one of those is deep --- they would either take a very long time or be impossible for the average programmer. In contrast, many other programmers I've heard claim to have done over a dozen different projects turn out to really be "I glued several libraries together" repeated many times; very much the opposite of Bellard.
In fact, I suspect one of the reasons he is so productive is because he shuns all social media.
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donald Knuth is certainly in the same league.
No doubt a brilliant academic and mathematical mind with invaluable contributions to field of comp-sci and algorithms and author of the iconic TAOCP, but in terms of software works he's single-handedly produced? He's most famous for TeX typesetting system and inventing Literate programming, but his other software have had a lot less impact. But that's mostly by choice as he's predominantly a professor who spends most…
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#168Is there anything that Fabrice can't do? I mean, FFMpeg is almost a PhD thesis in and of itself, and he still manages to find time to make TinyC, QEMU, and now this. To say I'm jealous of his skills would be an understatement.
Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#169Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine
#170Wow. The core is a single 1.5MB file that's very readable, it supports nearly all of the latest standard, and Bellard even added his own extensions on top of that. It has compile-time options for either a NaN-boxing or traditional tagged union object representation, so he didn't just go for a single minimal implementation (unlike e.g. OTCC) but even had the time and energy to explore a bit. I like the fact that it's…
Why would you have a distaste for JavaScript based on how others use it? JavaScript has evolved into an extremely powerful and flexible language which is taking many great lessons from other languages. Sure its not perfect but its a real workhorse.
EDIT: I know you're not meant to ask why the downvotes, but I do wonder in this case - the comment is a reasonable one, I guess it's the many JavaScript haters piling on - "Haters gonna hate". I stand by these comments - JavaScript is a flawed but great language that has only proven over time its flexibility and adaptability to become probably the single most used language - the people who don't like it are those who don't use it/understand it.