121–130 of 161 posts
Agreed. Other programmers who seem super-productive to me include Julian Seward (bzip2 and valgrind), Larry Wall (patch, rn, and perl), Ken Thompson (Unix and substantial parts of Plan9 and Golang), Aaron Swartz (web.py, Open Library, Demand Progress), Steve Wozniak before his accident (Apple I, Apple II, Integer BASIC, a hardware video game, SWEET-16), of course Bill Gates (BASIC-80 and various other early Microsoft…
John Carmack.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do anyone know how these coding videos are created?
I don't know about the video, but there is a tool named Homura[1] that snapshots a file in Vim every so and often, and is able to generate a HTML file with interactive playback. Maybe it can be of some help. I found a sample online too[2] [1]: http://uguu-archive.appspot.com/homura/manual.html [2]: http://uguu-archive.appspot.com/nyaruko/edit.html
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555867
"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.
Flip side: don't feel tiny in comparison to this guy's achievements. Did he bang out LZEXE the first time he sat down at a terminal? Probably not. But over time, through pursuit of a passion and hard work, his skill has progressed incredibly. We can get there too, with persistence. And we can have fun on the way. This is as much a reminder for me as anyone, I have a tendency to compare myself to amazingly talented an…
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've met a few very accomplished (maybe not quite as accomplished as Bellard) people who are kind and not at all arrogant about it. I think a lack of arrogance and a generous view of those around you can really help someone to accomplish a lot. Arrogance is generally a hindrance to learning. If you already know the "best" way to do something, your less likely to learn a better one. If someone shows you a better way o…
It is a very viable path and on top of this, they naturally create little coves of open-hack spaces where like-minded geeks hang out :) I was lucky enough to have met a few and spent time in their company. They were all very accessible, if not shy at times. Visibly detached from the career path concerns and fully immersed into technology, building and tinkering.
On the opposite side, I had a misfortune to meet less talented types, yet with egos only matched by the senior management. They fervently protected their turf and enjoyed dispensing condescending remarks.
I will never forget as a junior dev, I was trying to understand how a piece of the system works and in my search came up to a stellar DBA asking about a stored procedure of interest. After a couple of minutes of witty pokes at my expense, he concluded: "Listen, you don't need to know this. It's not your concern. Go away."
Well, eventually, I got access to the guarded secrets and figured it out :)
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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 yo…
I am 41, and am assuming I will (be able to !) want to retire at 60.. I know Ghandi, Linus Pauling etc. But I suspect I shall be a tiny bit tired by 60. Who knows. Maybe I have 40 years to go. Whatever, I am fed up with looking back and thinking "if only" - so I shall try and minimise those by 60.
Hint: the two distinct prime factors of my current age add to 16 and I'm over 50
He also authored jslinux[1] in 2011. This guy is amazing and I am truly envious. [1] http://bellard.org/jslinux/
It is open source, available at http://www.ubercomp.com/jslm32/src/
I did both an interpreter and a (much faster) dynamic code generator that generates blocks of code in Javascript so it doesn't have to decode every instruction over and over again.
Oh, and before doing the project, I sent Bellard an email, and he was very polite and helpful. Even sent me some compliments after I was able to optimize it to run at a decent speed. A true master!!!
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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 yo…
I am 41, and am assuming I will (be able to !) want to retire at 60.. I know Ghandi, Linus Pauling etc. But I suspect I shall be a tiny bit tired by 60. Who knows. Maybe I have 40 years to go. Whatever, I am fed up with looking back and thinking "if only" - so I shall try and minimise those by 60.
Yeah, I hear you about the "if only" thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am 41, and am assuming I will (be able to !) want to retire at 60.. I know Ghandi, Linus Pauling etc. But I suspect I shall be a tiny bit tired by 60. Who knows. Maybe I have 40 years to go. Whatever, I am fed up with looking back and thinking "if only" - so I shall try and minimise those by 60.
Ghandi -> Gandhi Nothing personal. Seems like a very common mistake, but I can't figure out why. I also see this mistake when people mention Sal Khan as Sal Kahn.
The 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…