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I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

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Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the code quality is speed. And reach. You can not advance, unless you can read the code, you can understand the model, you can not scale beyond a certain point. The beauty of the architecture is the ability to build a spaceship compared to a train of kerosene tankers. Physically similar, but in capability radical different. I find this very scary. Somebody unable to perceive capabilities and tech-debt. If you can…

> But the code quality is speed No it’s not. Code quality is just code quality. It's a subjective measure. eg how do you define one thing is of greater "quality" than another? Is it CPU ops? Memory footprint? Code readability? And how do you measure readability? By who? What I find readable someone else might not, and visa versa. If you’re making choices to improve development throughput then that’s fine. But so ofte…

This is one of the reasons I got away from writing commercial software and now only write code as a hobby.

To me, the code itself is the product. I want the code to look like a beautiful painting—the fact that it does something is secondary. I’ll sit there for hours working on things like const correctness, and making sure each class has the bare minimum amount of state/instance variables, making sure function arguments are named and ordered consistently, even though it has no effect on user-visible bugs or runtime performance. I’m the kind of person that paints the back of the cabinet. Even though no user will see it, I will know it is there.

Obviously this mentality is at odds with commercial software’s imperative to shit out barely working spaghetti code as fast and cheaply as possible, so I opted out.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re ostensibly arguing the same thing I am though. Focusing on building the thing rather than designing the code to look pretty.

I don't think "ostensibly" means what you think it means. But I can't guess what you meant.

It should read: You’re effectively arguing the same thing I am.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#214
post #127
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozart doesn’t feel right. The code isn’t beautiful and elegant. It’s not built to last (at least for ffmpeg) or be some kind of masterpiece. He writes code to get a job done or tickle some intellectual curiosity. It’s not beautiful but that’s OK. I think Unicorn illustrates one of the issues with his style. It wouldn’t have needed to exist of the QEMU code was architected into neat components. But then writing spagh…

> I think there’s actually a sharp contrast with John Carmack here. Fabrice might be smarter and faster but Carmack is perhaps a better software engineer. There’s few things I find more pathetic than trying really hard to show who’s best and ranking things that have no business being ranked. You will find humans are n-dimensional and elude these simplistic categories.

Carmack it's a better engineer, but Bellard it's a better thinker and innovator. To each its own.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without YouTube and porn, is there really an internet?

More like without video, is there still internet..... Absolutely yes. It's a tad hyperbolic I agree

My kids strongly disagree.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#217
post #66
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I say, Bellard is Mozart when most of us can't even hope to be Salieri.

Mozart doesn’t feel right. The code isn’t beautiful and elegant. It’s not built to last (at least for ffmpeg) or be some kind of masterpiece. He writes code to get a job done or tickle some intellectual curiosity. It’s not beautiful but that’s OK. I think Unicorn illustrates one of the issues with his style. It wouldn’t have needed to exist of the QEMU code was architected into neat components. But then writing spagh…

Oof, HN says the darndest things.

OTOH it's fun to see people comparing programmers (better/worse) as if that actually mattered.

As the internet says, post physique bro.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#218

"Fabrice Bellard" by Andy Gocke and Nick Pizzolato https://www.ipaidia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/117-2020-f...

Do you know if that's the same Nick Pizzolato who wrote True Detective?

It's not. Different spelling: Nic Pizzolatto.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#219

For those unaware, you can find Fabrice's website here: https://bellard.org/ It has a full list of his projects.

Great programmers often also have great personal website design, everything is so clear and not one bit of redundance.

The website of Daniel J. Bernstein is similar: https://cr.yp.to/djb.html

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#220
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be fine with Daniel Stenberg. :)

There are multiple people I'm fine with in software circles - Daniel being one of them, but then we have Notch and DHH who used to be cool, but some of their current hot takes are kinda oof. Specifically way too many authors whose books I've loved have turned out to be not very good human beings. David Eddings and Neil Gaiman are pretty good examples of this.

Rowling / Harry Potter comes to mind, too, and Heinlein. You need to be able to separate the artist from the art, the programmer from the program. It’s ok to appreciate a work even if you disagree with its creator’s morals or ethics.
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