"Fabrice Bellard" by Andy Gocke and Nick Pizzolato https://www.ipaidia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/117-2020-f...
Jesus... has that ever been submitted to HN!? It should be.
I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
111–120 of 488 posts
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
No he never hid his identity, if you looked him up, you found his picture. Satoshi shouldn't be compared, I don't hold bitcoins nor am I interested, but the name is a lore. It was stamped on the original document. Fabrice Bellard is a real person shipping code; not an internet anonymous identity.
Parent knows. He makes an analogy, not an absolute equivalence.
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Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#113"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am." Hedging the claim with a lot of qualifiers. What's wrong with admitting someone is a better programmer? even giving someone else the benefit of the doubt?
You’re not the only one who noticed. I think the unspoken idea is that Carmack thinks he’s better without ever having met him or seen his code at all. That deserves a few qualifiers.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#114Carmack replies to slop generated by slop account. What a time to be alive.
Yeah, I can't finish reading tweet. Is that even made for human consumption?
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mozart doesn’t feel right. The code isn’t beautiful and elegant. It’s not built to last (at least for ffmpeg) or be some kind of masterpiece. He writes code to get a job done or tickle some intellectual curiosity. It’s not beautiful but that’s OK. I think Unicorn illustrates one of the issues with his style. It wouldn’t have needed to exist of the QEMU code was architected into neat components. But then writing spagh…
I think developers sometimes get too obsessed with code quality thinking that smarter code makes them a better developer. In fact I’ve seen developers fall into the trap of mistaking their code as the product and thus spend so much time beautifying it that that fail to ever release anything. Then you have the other end of the spectrum where people are too focused on hacking stuff together that the end result is unmai…
It's the opposite, better-factored code makes me, a mediocre developer, capable of making progress instead of hitting a complexity wall.
It's separate from striving for "beautiful" code, beauty within well-factored boundaries yields dimishing returns compared to just having the boundaries.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#116For those unaware, you can find Fabrice's website here: https://bellard.org/
It has a full list of his projects.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's understood in the comment which explicitly indicates that there are many programming circles and that Bellard is known in a number of them (but not all). eg: I grew up in the Australian Kimberley region (kind of remote), spent decades in geophysical mapping, multi channel data processing, computational algebra, and other odd niches, have no real interest in SV, and am quite familiar with Bellard's work. No ide…
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro... https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ...
That validates his point - barely anyone outside the ruby community would even know about DHH if he didn't manage to trigger the eternally outraged.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#118Can anybody point me at any interviews of Fabrice? I've looked several times (including just now) and I can't find /anything/ - am I missing something obvious?
He gives virtually no interviews and will not talk about himself, here's an example from 2014 where only replies to technical questions: https://www.macplus.net/depeche-82364-interview-le-createur-...
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#119"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am." Hedging the claim with a lot of qualifiers. What's wrong with admitting someone is a better programmer? even giving someone else the benefit of the doubt?
It's just a tweet, no need to over-analyze everything.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think developers sometimes get too obsessed with code quality thinking that smarter code makes them a better developer. In fact I’ve seen developers fall into the trap of mistaking their code as the product and thus spend so much time beautifying it that that fail to ever release anything. Then you have the other end of the spectrum where people are too focused on hacking stuff together that the end result is unmai…
But the code quality is speed. And reach. You can not advance, unless you can read the code, you can understand the model, you can not scale beyond a certain point. The beauty of the architecture is the ability to build a spaceship compared to a train of kerosene tankers. Physically similar, but in capability radical different. I find this very scary. Somebody unable to perceive capabilities and tech-debt. If you can…
“You can read the code”
.. is very, very important in the context of milliseconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years. And decades.
Today, you might say that John/Fabrice’ code is readable/unreadable, but will that also be true in 5 years time, in a different cultural/technological era?
Obviously yes in the case of these individuals - because the ecosystem their products have created is self-sustaining at a mass (consumer/social) level.
I’ve built software which has shipped and effected the lives of millions, too. Many of us have.
But I have not built a massive ecosystem by working on the right software which was adopted by millions of developers who read my code, was inspired by it, and used it for something in their own products - thus creating sub-ecosystems upon sub-ecosystems, a big sprawling tree of economy which spreads out into the mass of humanity who use technology.
In this story we have two cases of individuals who have accomplished an extraordinary reach of software, in their own uniquely flavored ways - and this demonstrates that there are no absolute requirements to strip personality from the code - as long as its damn good code in the first place.
>filter candidates out of companies
It’s a great way to decide not to work at a company which managers do not understand the importance of architecture at various scales, milliseconds, seconds, hours, days, weeks ..