QEMU and FFMPEG!!
Where would we be today without Fabrice?
I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
131–140 of 488 posts
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#132"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am."
There is no almost John.
One of you has kept shipping for 30 years, the other one has spent most of the last couple of years in courts for stealing from former employers or on social media promoting being toxic and "anti woke" (whatever that is).
For me Michael Abrash (Quake, xbox) is a much better developer and person.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, two mythologized figures (Carmack and Bellard). They're good (like, quite good), but as soon as their names come up people start talking about some weird expectation of what they are supposed to think rather than the actual things they did. Somehow, that mythologizing diminishes their accomplishments.
Oh, this is human nature and you will find it impossible to avoid this framing of cult figures, because they are indeed cult figures - albeit positively perceived ones, since they appear to not just be doing it for themselves, but altruistically every wonder they produce is for their users - and thus their works have effectively and productively impacted the lives of millions of other people, at economies of scale mo…
Humanity has some 300.000 years of existing, and we can only trace back the prevalence of cult figures a few thousand years back.
For all we know, it could be a temporary fluke and we'll snap back to something else. We could be beings with no default to snap back to, ever changing, destined to dissolve the prevalence of cult figures into something else in the following eras.
In a few thousand years we could totally see this practice as some distant-past thing like making clay pots or carrying Roman dodecahedrons.
The new cultural trend could become jumping off cliffs, and someone would be arguing that it's inevitable human nature.
By the way, no rush to de-mythologize. I'm not fighting any dragon here, you do you.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#134#howtomakethisaboutme "Almost certainly better than I am", eff off Carmack.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#135Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#136"Fabrice Bellard" by Andy Gocke and Nick Pizzolato https://www.ipaidia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/117-2020-f...
It's pretty dated since he's done more stuff since!
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#137Fabrice Bellard is the actual greatest programmer that has ever lived. Carmack's "almost certainly" doesn't look good here.
The actual greatest programmer is the one who gets compensated according to their output.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, two mythologized figures (Carmack and Bellard). They're good (like, quite good), but as soon as their names come up people start talking about some weird expectation of what they are supposed to think rather than the actual things they did. Somehow, that mythologizing diminishes their accomplishments.
Telling stories, looking for gods that don't have our limitations and telling stories about those gods is pretty much in our nature irrespective of the era.
There's no such thing as "human nature", that's just a way to justify something that can't be easily explained.
I have nothing against it. The fact that I explained a mechanism (mythologizing diminishes one's real work) offends people who like to do it, but that's outside of my control. It's not meant to offend or deny their right to do it. It is just what it is and I'm naming it. I understand it's uncomfortable, and pulling the "everyone does it" card makes things easier.
I love mythology by the way, stories, etc. Fascinating stuff.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#139Earlier 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…
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.
You’re ostensibly arguing the same thing I am though. Focusing on building the thing rather than designing the code to look pretty.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#140Earlier 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 there’s actually a sharp contrast with John Carmack here. Fabrice might be smarter and faster but Carmack is perhaps a better software engineer. There’s few things I find more pathetic than trying really hard to show who’s best and ranking things that have no business being ranked. You will find humans are n-dimensional and elude these simplistic categories.
Yes, ranking requires reducing to a single dimension where all interesting things are multi-dimensions. This is a lossy process, which often tells more about the one(s) doing the ranking than what's ranked.