Does anyone have a link to or know how he came up with his formula for the computation of pi in base-2?
I look at that and... I just want to know: how?
Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
71–80 of 161 posts
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#72Earlier 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.
Dan Bernstein, developing software without bugs and hardcore cryptographer: http://cr.yp.to/
Ricardo Quesada: https://github.com/ricardoquesada
- Cocos2D for iPhone (more used 2D game engine)
- Cocos2D Javascript Bindings
- Cocos2D for Python
- SqueakNOS: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5727
- Driver for an obscure wireless Lucene device (new protocol reverse engineering)
- TEG (Tenes Empanadas Graciela)
- Batalla Naval
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#73To think that 99% of video on the web today is possible because of FFmpeg is mind blowing.
How so?
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#74For 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: ht…
No meaningful disussion can come from this.
Other students went to the same school I'm sure. Why are we not seing the same results from all of them or at least from the majority of them? The question whether you should get university education is not an easy one. I'm strugling with it all the time and I am going to an university.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#75The question from previous discussion remains unanswered. How does he finance his production of top notch open source software? At least for me, the day to day churn of my day job leaves me too mentally exhausted to chase the crazy ideas I get from time to time, let alone finish them. Imagine a world where hackers, artists and artisans could follow their passions and could chase crazy ideas without a risk of losing t…
In France and many other places in Europe is common to work 36 hours per week, so you have a reasonable amount of time to do your own stuff.
You actually work 40h/w (usually) and then consolidate the 4 extra hours into a day (or days) off.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#76> 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.
I started on my TI-83+ and then later moved up to a TI-89, which was great for wannabe programmers because you could easily write programs in C (using TIGCC) instead of having to deal with the limitations of TI-BASIC.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading his accomplishment is humbling for any programmer. The fact that he doesn't act like an asshole should serve as an example for the rest of us.
Everyone is an asshole in someone's mind. You'll never please all people, and when you don't, they'll think you're an asshole. That's life. Don't let what they think bother you.
>> Everyone is an asshole in someone's mind.
That's a nice one, have to remember that :-)
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#78My 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…
Plus one. I think it's really the total lack of selfishness that makes him so great.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#79For 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: ht…
No meaningful disussion can come from this. Other students went to the same school I'm sure. Why are we not seing the same results from all of them or at least from the majority of them? The question whether you should get university education is not an easy one. I'm strugling with it all the time and I am going to an university.
> Why are we not seing the same results from all of them or at least from the majority of them?
The point isn't that Fabrice Bellard isn't special. It's that even a special (clearly brilliant and self-directed) guy like him can arguably benefit from the systematic learning of domain specific information that happens at a university.
It could be the case that had Bellard not gone to university, he would have gone to the library and learned all those things on his own, and still built all the things he did. Or, it could be the case that the university exposed him to a ton of readily digestible theoretical knowledge that he wouldn't necessarily have stumbled upon on his own.
He's a counter point to guys like Zuck. You don't really need any theoretical knowledge to build something like Facebook. You need a lot of theoretical knowledge to build something like FFMpeg. A university education not only provides a way to learn the necessary theory, but exposes you to a lot of domains of theory which can inspire you to solve problems you might not have thought to tackle, because you find out that there are theoretical tools to help you tackle those problems.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#80The question from previous discussion remains unanswered. How does he finance his production of top notch open source software? At least for me, the day to day churn of my day job leaves me too mentally exhausted to chase the crazy ideas I get from time to time, let alone finish them. Imagine a world where hackers, artists and artisans could follow their passions and could chase crazy ideas without a risk of losing t…
I finance my open source software like I do with all my hobbies, by having a day job and doing what I can on nights and weekends. Incremental effort, patience, and commitment are important for side projects that are funded like this. And I respectfully call bullshit on mental exhaustion. The true burnout comes after juggling your personal work and your day job, which you can fix by throttling back your personal work.…
The most inspiring and insightful comment I've read on this a while ago was: "you'll be surprised how much you can accomplish with just half an hour every other day", from someone with a day job, a family, and other hobbies besides programming side-projects.
There really is truth in this, most people (myself included) often lose confidence and motivation when thinking too much about the amount of work to complete side-projects, but you only have to remember there are over 300 days in a year, and you can get a lot done in 150 hours of work.
Don't set hard deadlines for yourself as if you're working for someone else, and don't get lost in minor details. Just maintain slow but steady progress, and chances are progress will accelerate when projects start to get closer to completion.