Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#61

Post by SatvikBeri » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:06 PM UTC

limmeau wrote: post #22

DigitalSea wrote: post #8

My theory is that Fabrice is not human and most likely a creature not of this world. Seriously, how the hell can someone be so talented and amazing and above all remain such a nice guy? Fabrice is a down to Earth and amazingly talented individual who will go down in history; text books will reference him, heck he'll have a movie one day (maybe not). I don't care if this is an old article, Bellard deserves to be on th…

You mean, like Nicolas Bourbaki?

You know Bourbaki was a group, not an individual, right?

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#62

Post by hobbyist » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:06 PM UTC

demallien wrote: post #12

hobbyist wrote: post #4

Old article resurfacing again on HN, neverthless he is everyone's idol

Heh. Be jealous - I'll be working in the same team as Fab, starting next month :D

Shit. Yes I am Jealous. That is fucking awesome. I would leave any highest paid job with google, fb blah blah to work with Fabrice :)

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#63

Post by mahmud » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

hallowtech wrote: post #49

> Bellard, born in 1972, began practicing his own coding techniques first on a TI-59 scientific calculator, at the beginning of the ‘80s. I wonder how many people have started their programming experience on a TI calculator. I had the same way in with a TI-85.

TI-82 here, my first programmable computer.

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#64

Post by k3n » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #30

I too think that Bellard has produced a ton of cool stuff, but bear in mind that the list given on that site spans 20 years of work. You can do a lot in 20 years. That's not to put him down in any way, but if you find yourself comparing your output to his make sure you consider the time span.

He's just a couple years older than me, and the brightest point in my entire programming career wouldn't even show up as a minor bullet point on the list of stuff he's done.

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#65

Post by incision » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:40 PM UTC

On my shortlist of people who I read/think about any time I might feel complacent about my own development.

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#66

Post by concernedctzn » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:44 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #8

My theory is that Fabrice is not human and most likely a creature not of this world. Seriously, how the hell can someone be so talented and amazing and above all remain such a nice guy? Fabrice is a down to Earth and amazingly talented individual who will go down in history; text books will reference him, heck he'll have a movie one day (maybe not). I don't care if this is an old article, Bellard deserves to be on th…

Just a note about his 4G/LTE base station project, you can replace that relatively expensive USRP with one of these: http://www.nuand.com

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#67

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

ishansharma wrote: post #14

"If there’s a secret to this superhero-level productivity, it appears to have less to do with comic-book mutation and radioactivity, and far more with discipline, confidence, rigor, and many years of practice." This is one line that you should take away from the article. Most of us think that highly productive programmers are magicians but we forget that they are just like us, just hard working and disciplined.

[deleted]

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#68

Post by S4M » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:48 PM UTC

rdudekul wrote: post #54

DanI-S wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, how the hell can someone be so talented and amazing and above all remain such a nice guy? There are a lot of those kind of people, from all walks of life. They're just not on HN.

> There are a lot of those kind of people, from all walks of life. They're just not on HN. I am sure there are more such people. Can you please point to some that you know of?. It is inspiring to read bios/accomplishments of such super productive programmers.

I'd recommend you to read _coders at work_ from Peter Seibel. It's some interviews with top programmers such as jwz, Peter Norvig, etc.

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#69

Post by dj2stein9 » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #8

My theory is that Fabrice is not human and most likely a creature not of this world. Seriously, how the hell can someone be so talented and amazing and above all remain such a nice guy? Fabrice is a down to Earth and amazingly talented individual who will go down in history; text books will reference him, heck he'll have a movie one day (maybe not). I don't care if this is an old article, Bellard deserves to be on th…

I don't know about you, but I'd watch the heck out of a dramatization of his Pi speed breaking record.

Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)

#70

Post by rayiner » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

For the sake of discussion, I'm going to throw some fuel on the "should you go to college?" fire. One of the things that's evident in Bellard's achievements is that he has a tremendous depth of domain specific knowledge, especially in signal processing. This is unsurprising, because he studied at Ecole Polytechnique, France's premier engineering school, specializing in telecommunications. See page 4-6 of this PDF: http://www.freearchive.org/o/55dfc9935a719fc36ab1d1656797273....