My personal programming heroes:
- Edi Weitz - http://weitz.de/ - Lots of Common Lisp libraries (cl-ppcre)
- Mike Pall - http://luajit.org/ - luajit off course
Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
81–90 of 161 posts
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#82To think that 99% of video on the web today is possible because of FFmpeg is mind blowing.
I'm not sure about that 99%. But I agree, for conservatives, FFmpeg is mind blowing.
For me, it's magical!
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#83The 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.…
Not all people have the capacity to do ambitious personal projects on top of their day job. I've tried, ended up with burnout and depression. So controlling the pressure means never planning to do something big on the side outside of holidays or other time off work.
It's nice that you're able to do it like this, but your approach won't work for everyone. People have different capacities for doing organized stuff. My limit is at about 8 hours a day, five days a week.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#84Earlier 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.
Steve Wozniak. I feel like a dork saying this, but sometimes I'll randomly page through his autobiography because I know I'll be inspired/amused from reading it:
http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-Fou...
It's hard to think of many others who are as unequivocally good-natured as Woz...accomplished or not.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#85Earlier 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'll nominate Julian Seward, who among other things created both bzip2 and Valgrind, wrote parts of GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler), and now works at Mozilla building and applying various analysis tools to Firefox/Gecko code.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#86> 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 57 here. Then went on with the HP-28 and HP-48. Wrote the first game using hardware scroll on the HP-48 (a Pacman).
Interesting that beyond the TI calculator, there are a few other parallels with Bellard: I studied in one of the top French engineering school (Mines de Paris), wrote a 3D program as a student (Alpha Waves, Guiness book for first 3D platformer), an open-source compiler (XL, http://xlr.sf.net), a machine emulator with dynamic translation (HP Integrity Virtual Machine, a VM for Itanium), worked on a C++ compiler (HP aC++), dabbled in Emacs (e.g. first graphical Emacs for MacOSX back in the Rhapsody days), designed or wrote some code used all over the world (e.g. modern C++ exception handling), I sometimes took really new and "minimal" approaches to old and complex problems (e.g. the scanner and parser for XLR total 1500 lines of rather simple C++ code). I keep studying physics like Bellard kept studying math, and came up with my ow wild ideas (e.g. I'm delusional enough to believe I know how to unify GTR and QM).
But there's a couple of pretty major differences as well. Bellard's work was always freely available. Except for XL, mine was mostly proprietary (and XL, an exception to the rule, was a resounding flop as far as community involvment was concerned). Alpha Waves was a commercial product. HPVM was a commercial product. aC++ was a commercial product. And today, they are all dead or dying. As for fame, I'll let you judge of Bellard's fame relative to mine ;-)
I think that there is a lesson here about the strength of openness. If you start your career, making your stuff open and sharing freely may be a pretty good move...
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If one person calls you a jackass, ignore him. If two people call you a jackass, think about it. If three people call you a jackass, buy yourself a saddle.
I like this proverb, but I think maybe it should be updated to 1% of people who know you, 2%, 3% or some such.
I mean, if thousands of people know you, 3 thinking you are a jackass isn't bad.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#88I 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.
Some might see this as a bit negative - I take that in a positive way - I have maybe another 20 years of brain power left. Since the last 20 years were not nearly as productive as Bellard's I shall endeavour to calm down, and make the next 20 count.
I have to ask, what is your age that you think you only have 20 years of brain power left? For sure, there are ages for which this is true, but given the age distribution of HN readers, seeing this post makes me curious.
Perhaps the plasticity of our brains is reduced, but that alone doesn't mean you have no brain power.
If you think of learning as "leveling up", you may stop increasing in level at some point, but you are still very powerful and productive.
I do agree with the sentiment of your last sentence however. We should endeavor to make our "leveling up" years count, and who knows, maybe you level up for the rest of your years.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#89> 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 a TI-89, writing quizzes and quadratic equation solvers. When I got to college and found that other kids in the class had written racing games on theirs I felt like I was out of my depth - I can't imagine how the kids who'd never programmed felt.
Re: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
#90The guy is also incredibly nice. I started using QEMU in 2003 and it was a huge relief in my work; so one of my colleague decided to send a "thank you" email to Bellard. Bellard replied very nicely on how happy he was that we found QEMU useful, and even gave us his phone number.