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I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

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Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#181

Post by mihaic »

pandaforce wrote: post #47

Bellard hasn't been involved in FFmpeg for *over 20 years* at this point, and more like 23. His code was not great and reeked of sphagetti due to FFmpeg back then lacking any framework for code sharing between components and codecs. These days none of his code survives. Everything that became of FFmpeg is because of other developers. Yet he's treated as the one-and-only BDFL of FFmpeg, with any other developers build…

Interesting counterpoint. I think this is the Peter principle in software: a lot of people are great at prototyping, but not great at the next stages of the project. Other people step in for those, but their existence is mostly ignored, since they can't easily fit inside a narrative.

One think to note though is unelected dictators do have their benefits, even if they come with obvious downsides.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#182

Post by zerr »

hashar wrote: post #178
zerr wrote: post #172

An opinion: there were (and are) many great unknown engineers behind proprietary corporate projects. FFmpeg and QEMU became famous because these are open-source projects, not because nothing similar was done before (it was done, but in the proprietary world).

Maybe but I think you are underestimating the achievements Fabrice has accomplished. Among others: - Improved an algorithm to compute Pi, ran it on a *personal laptop* and broke the world record. That achievement is not even listed on his personal homepage, and it a single line of facts with Zero bragging involved https://www.bellard.org/pi/pi2700e9/ - a PC emulator in vanilla javascript, boot the Linux Kernel in a b…

Not at all. I mean, regardless of him not having a fancy web page or an Instagram, he is anyway an Internet geek celebrity we all know and respect. My point is that I believe there are many similar but noname engineers whose achievements stayed and will stay behind corporate proprietary walls.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#183

Post by mihaic »

swiftcoder wrote: post #13

> A French engineer who lives quietly in Paris has spent 30 years writing software that the entire internet now runs on without knowing his name. ... do tech people really not know who Fabrice Bellard is? He's kind of a household name in a lot of programming circles

I think I've known about him for 20 years right now, ever since I discovered his code to compute pi to an ungodly amount of digits. The man sure was prolific.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#184

Post by afavour »

evilturnip wrote: post #7

It's obvious that those that write the tools/infrastructure are less visible than those that create the end product. I don't know a single name behind the construction of the AI tensor core in Nvidia's chips but it is effectively what runs all of AI.

I think that undersells Bellard. The engineers that made NVidia’s chips made a trade: they give their achievements and potential public recognition to their employer in return for generous compensation. Bellard’s work is overwhelmingly free and open source.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#185

Post by miki123211 »

It's interesting to me that most of Bellard's work is basically turning specs into C.

His most important projects are ffmpeg (codec specs), qEmu (ISA specs), QuickJS (the EcmaScript spec), tinyC (the C spec), and his telecom company (LTE specs). I guess the pi calculations and neural network stuff are exceptions.

Just to be clear, this doesn't make his work any less impressive. Highly performant codec and emulator implementations are no easy feat; it's just interesting that most of this work falls into that relatively narrow area.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#186

Post by WillAdams »

edarchis wrote: post #24
swiftcoder wrote: post #13

> A French engineer who lives quietly in Paris has spent 30 years writing software that the entire internet now runs on without knowing his name. ... do tech people really not know who Fabrice Bellard is? He's kind of a household name in a lot of programming circles

I'll be honest. I discovered him with this post. And I studied in France. I am also familiar with his projects, the obfuscated C code contest and more. Just don't remember seeing his name. I guess that if people aren't loud on social media, people tend to ignore them. Respect to those who posted their praise of someone else on social media. We need more of this.

What percentage of the population are computer programmers?

Welcome to that sub-group of the Lucky 10,000 today!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#187

Post by afavour »

cassianoleal wrote: post #141

> Today FFmpeg is the invisible engine of the internet. I get what the author is saying but I really dislike this hyperbole. The Internet will be absolutely fine if FFmpeg suddenly disappears. Companies that rely on it in the core of their product may not, but the Internet absolutely will, and the vast majority of websites and other Internet services will keep working just fine.

It’s the invisible engine of what makes up the majority of today’s internet. I don’t think that’s hyperbole. Tomorrows internet might not be the same.

Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer

#190

Post by nixon_why69 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #139
nixon_why69 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't read the codebases in question but people were talking about spaghetti code, which would not be well-factored and would impede someone less talented from comprehending it or being able to change it effectively.

I guess I'm saying there are code quality concerns which do affect velocity/maintainability and then there are superficial and stylistic issues. The former aren't just about some kind of beauty standard, they're part of executing.

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