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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

#71

Post by keybored »

copperx wrote: post #4

"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?

Carmack seems arrogant[1]. Which is why I take that statement as high praise.

It’s also a nod to his own fame.

[1] This is based on Masters of Doom. And the anecdotes are probably from the 90’s. And being arrogant does not mean that being confident in one’s ability is unjustified or that they are in fact not skilled. Being arrogant and being highly skilled are completely orthogonal.

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

#72

Post by grokys »

hamburgererror wrote: post #35

> He just keeps shipping. > He just wrote code. > He was not done. > He kept going. > He is still shipping. That guy talks like a scrum master, this linkedin bullshit writing style is just so bad...

Pretty sure this is just AI writing style, and yes it's a huge turnoff.

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

#73

Post by lnsru »

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…

What you describe is obvious corporate management path. You start with MVP, it gets traction, bosses like you and then others will code for the original author dismantling and rewriting original MVP. And don’t be shy - if one can pull this off he’s worth the credits. There are many who can code and not much who can manage.

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

#74

Post by keyle »

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…

Thanks, that maybe one side of the coin but it's very one-sided. The man is busy innovating and maybe has no time to carry on as he focuses on other projects. But he was there from the start and made it happen.

Most of the code in the linux kernel today is not from Linus.

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

#75

Post by keyle »

sph wrote: post #3

First time I see his picture, and it’s a bit like someone’s revealed the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto when it’s clear they are going out of their way to protect their privacy and stay out of the limelight. My impression is the guy had always better things to do than engage with the greater internet, like thinking real hard and solving difficult problems. Much respect to his work, but even more respect to his work eth…

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.

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

#76

Post by keyle »

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've been around for a long time and I know of him. Most people don't bother looking up where stuff comes from.

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

#77

Post by nickcw »

fmajid wrote: post #31
vkazanov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, carmack is THE game dev of 90s and 2000s fame. His 2d/3d engine work was outstanding back in the day. Bellard did multiple breakthroughs: ffmpeg, qemu, tcc, jslinux, a state of the art FFT algorithm. I probable skipped a few. With all due respect to carmack, a single ballard's projects would put anybody into the eternal hall of programmers fame right next to Linus, Carmack, Stallman, the Bell labs crowd and oth…

He is also a mathematician, having invented a new algorithm for calculating the digits of pi

Here is his paper on it which is a little 2 pager:

https://bellard.org/pi/pi_bin.pdf

Though I have to say the last line of the proof "...which gives (1) by reordering the terms" took me much head scratching to understand!

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

#78

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

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…

We mustn’t forget the context: FFmpeg and Videolan got their start in dorm rooms, where students used them to stream TV in the dorm and share movies.

The Polytechnique and École Centrale campuses are just a few kilometers apart, and both projects began around 1997–1998.

I don’t know about you, but as a student, I was too busy drinking beer to write clean code.

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

#79

Post by st_goliath »

hamburgererror wrote: post #35

> He just keeps shipping. > He just wrote code. > He was not done. > He kept going. > He is still shipping. That guy talks like a scrum master, this linkedin bullshit writing style is just so bad...

> He kept going.

> He is still shipping.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schiffen#Etymology_2

:-P

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

#80

Post by u1hcw9nx »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #43
tjpnz wrote: post #11

From 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.

You can stay in EU if you don't need large amounts of capital needed to grow.

EU is thin in capital, not in innovation. Regulation is not an issue for high-tech. The list of smaller startups US and Chinese megacorps buy every year from EU is staggering.

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