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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

#231

Post by fdsfsdsd »

youarecringe wrote: post #230
fdsfsdsd wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch how developers breathlessly defend code quality and stand tall ready to die on the hill against "AI slop". Craftsmanship, quality control, oh, it's all so, so important. No, it's absolutely vital to civilization. Then witness the amazing reversal when some member of The Tribe pushes unbelievably unreadable slop that works. Then we see his Ring getting kissed by all the betas: "if it work, it works". Pick a side…

Before AI Slop most code quality that ran in production was shit, that's the GP's point. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply did not have to come in contact with a wide variety of code in their job.

Yet these same developers, these slop machines, are willing to die for "craftsmanship" and "code quality" when they are threatened by statistics. I don't see how you addressed my point.

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

#232

Post by manmal »

dofm wrote: post #41
manmal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmack might think that there are certain areas he will be better due to decades of experience. Overall programmer isn’t a bad qualifier at all, it’s actually making it sound less offhand and more honest.

1) Bellard is 2) avoid qualifiers in personal compliments (unless ironic)

I don’t agree with 2). It’s ok to qualify. Sounds sycophantic to not do it.

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

#233

Post by fdsfsdsd »

slibhb wrote: post #228
fdsfsdsd wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am." That is a work of art in and of itself. It's genius narcissism. "almost certainly", "overall programmer", are we really going there? Are we 16? Why even do the comparison? Fabrice is not a "programmer". He is an engineer. Programming is a medium he often works in and that medium is completely meaningless in and of itself. I would be offended if someone c…

Had the same reaction to Carmack's wording. I don't agree about the distinction between programming and engineering; to me it's all programming, engineering is just the word we started using to make it sound higher status.

Fair enough. I can see your point about engineering, but in this case I find it hard to classify the generic SaaS programmer and the guy calculating Pi to 2700 billion digits on his workstation using his own formula - which actually is the innovation here - under the same rubric, but I guess that boat has sailed a long time ago.

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

#234

Post by santiagobasulto »

Bellard has a very interesting project that is `ts_zip`, a compression algorithm powered by LLMs. It's just an "experiment" and should never be used in production, but very smart.

The description on his website is amusing: "The ts_zip utility can compress (and hopefully decompress) text files using a Large Language Model"

https://bellard.org/ts_zip/

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

#235

Post by gus_massa »

pandaforce wrote: post #47

Bellard hasn't been involved in FFmpeg for *over 20 years* at this point, and more like 23. His code was not great and reeked of sphagetti due to FFmpeg back then lacking any framework for code sharing between components and codecs. These days none of his code survives. Everything that became of FFmpeg is because of other developers. Yet he's treated as the one-and-only BDFL of FFmpeg, with any other developers build…

> He's an unelected dictator

He has no real power. You can fork the project and organize an election.

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

#236

Post by fdsfsdsd »

ryandrake wrote: post #211
hnlmorg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 argume…

Although in this case it's more like using the paint in the tin to paint the tin itself. It's useless and completely missing the point of why the paint exists in the first place.

You do you, I'm sorry if I come across rude and stupid, but I am both things. But "code is the product" is what IMO caused the downfall of this entire profession. No wonder everyone is trying to get rid of us. I wouldn't want a plumber that's obsessed with the tubes itself and not whether my house has working plumbing in a reasonable time frame and within budget.

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

#237

Post by deltarholamda »

Keyframe wrote: post #215

Maybe a hot take, but I wouldn't call Carmack a great programmer as in _one of the greats_, but definitely influental and original.

I'm not even sure how you'd define a great programmer. Like Justice Potter Stewart I sort of "know it when I see it". For example, I don't think anybody is going to put Rasmus Lerdorf on the Mount Rushmore of Great Programmers, but man alive is PHP really important and quite good, even at the time of release.

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

#238

Post by kmstout »

bravetraveler wrote: post #174
herodoturtle wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm here wondering if there's a limit to HN's nested replies.

I'll continue to do my part as time allows, also curious. Anyway, if enough flag the top [like I did], it'll collapse.

Every so often, ask others just how far their ideas go.

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

#239

Post by ozgrakkurt »

fdsfsdsd wrote: post #226
lambdaone wrote: post #160

Bellard is a genius. Carmack's modesty about his own genius is impressive too.

"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am." That is a work of art in and of itself. It's genius narcissism. "almost certainly", "overall programmer", are we really going there? Are we 16? Why even do the comparison? Fabrice is not a "programmer". He is an engineer. Programming is a medium he often works in and that medium is completely meaningless in and of itself. I would be offended if someone c…

Him thinking or saying that he is a great programmer isn’t narcissistic in the grand scheme of things.

Especially if you consider ignorant people who don’t even know how to program are writing about “the future of programming” now and a ton of people are reading them.

Same about mathematics and w/e unlucky subject is attacked by the slopmasters.

It is fair for a person who programmed his whole life to assume he is a good programmer IMO

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

#240

Post by dofm »

manmal wrote: post #232
dofm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Bellard is 2) avoid qualifiers in personal compliments (unless ironic)

I don’t agree with 2). It’s ok to qualify. Sounds sycophantic to not do it.

You can find a formulation that doesn't sound sycophantic without including a qualifier that could be misinterpreted as backhanded, because on a bad day it will be.

(Especially if you are complimenting a person with ADHD.)

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