"... that the entire Internet runs on without knowing his name"
I'd hazard a guess that most people who run Internet things know who Fabrice Bellard is, and may indeed have spoken to him at some point.
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
#52Bellard 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…
You alright, mate?
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Tech people" aren't one single homogeneous mass. His name is unlikely to show up in the same conversation as, say, DHH.
I knew of Fabrice, and have admired him for many years…but who is DHH?
DHH markets himself much better. His company (basecamp), in a sense, revolves around his public persona and he's unapologetic about this. It's the same with all of his projects (e.g. Omarchy recently).
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#54> 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
And you can just email him. He's just this guy, that writes stuff, and likes to help answer questions about it.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#55Bellard 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…
That's just, like, your opinion man
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#56> 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 have an explicit rule not to meet or look up my heroes. Been burned way too many times. I don't need to know who is building VLC, curl, ffmpeg or any of the other essentials in my life. I just appreciate their work and pitch in some money if possible.
If you don't put them on a pedestal, you won't ever be crushed when they can't stay on top of it. Appreciating people and the results of people's work doesn't require worship. People don't have to be perfect or even good to make good things. Coming to terms with this and being able to take people as they are instead of how you want them to be is just another part of growing up and leaving behind childish attachments.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#57Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an explicit rule not to meet or look up my heroes. Been burned way too many times. I don't need to know who is building VLC, curl, ffmpeg or any of the other essentials in my life. I just appreciate their work and pitch in some money if possible.
You'd be fine with Daniel Stenberg. :)
There are multiple people I'm fine with in software circles - Daniel being one of them, but then we have Notch and DHH who used to be cool, but some of their current hot takes are kinda oof.
Specifically way too many authors whose books I've loved have turned out to be not very good human beings. David Eddings and Neil Gaiman are pretty good examples of this.
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#59From the tweet he's replying to: >A quiet French engineer who never moved to Silicon Valley wrote the code that quietly runs the internet. Why do some assume you need to move to SV to make an impact in tech?
There’s a strong narrative that it’s unreasonable to stay in the EU (“too regulated”, etc.) if you want to hack on real stuff. Yet plenty of us do — Bellard being exhibit A.
Salvatore Sanfilippo (a.k.a. Antirez) exhibit B
Re: I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
#60How on earth were those people able to create such amazing things? Will I ever be able to create something that brilliant someday? What should I even make? I have so many more tools than they did, even LLMs. Where can I learn the ideas and skills they had?