Posted by apitman 15 hours ago
And more https://www.bellard.org/
I have been referring to his page for decades as an example of one can have a huge respect without having a fancy web page and no bragging at all. He is a genius :-)
In fact, if you ask me, I think the tweet's picture is semi-real; I trust the computer history museum to have the original and the tweet has an AI-upscaled photo with artificial details.
Where would we be today without Fabrice?
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?
This is because we've been trained to be humble by the machines we work with. Computers expose a lot of our mistakes, and over time they remove any illusion that we can be quickly confident about things.
I would take the qualifiers in his post as an indication of his general disinclination towards making absolute statements, not as a lack of humility.
That's unacceptable! Bring out the surgically precise praise!
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 others.
i do understand how carmack did what he did logistically (time, effort, skills, compensation)...
Fabrice is just out of this world. When? How? Why? No idea.
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!
Fabrice is more clever and faster, I guess.
But John Carmack is in my mind a better software engineer. He writes elegant code that can be used and maintained for a long time. At least from Quake 2ish, but you can see signs of solid code architecture already in Doom.
Doom code will live almost as-is forever. The code Fabrice wrote for ffmpeg has been entirely replaced
2) avoid qualifiers in personal compliments (unless ironic)
(Especially if you are complimenting a person with ADHD.)
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.
Case in point, from the linked interview:
> Could you say a couple of words about yourself?
> I would rather not talk about myself, except that I created other projects such as FFmpeg or QEMU.
My previous comment with links - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46372370
dang's links - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379975
Over half the planet gets a chance to prove they're smart in this day and age, between gaokao in China and whatever the exams are called in India, plus the western world and the rich portions of poor countries.
I’m no Einstein. XD
I wasn’t trying to minimize Bellard’s contributions! I’m in awe of them, and very grateful. If anything I was just noticing that Fabrice is a fantastic example of how much contribution those geniuses could make if they had access to even the bare minimum of education and stability.
For example, if they weren’t growing up in the kilns of India, where they don't actually have real opportunity to participate in “whatever the exams are called in India”:
A schlub like me probably wouldn't, and I recognize the advantages I've had, but your quote was about Einsteins.