Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a Super-Productive Programmer (2011)

There's a weird interplay between comments and submissions on HN. Popular comment about Bellard yesterday? Bet you'll see a write-up of Bellard submitted today.

The third stage will be tomorrow when comments casually refer to information gleaned from the article submitted today as if it were common knowledge. There will be an article about a new JS framework and someone will make a comment like "of course, programmers like Bellard[0] managed to be quite productive without the use of a similar framework."

The circle of life is majestic to behold.

As a programmer, I am in awe of what Fabrice Bellard has accomplished. This article made me curious about his background, jokingly thinking that if he was Catholic he could become the Patron Saint of Computer Programmers for giving away many millions of software for free. I was amused to find he was born in the place that kicked off the French Revolution:

The city gained some notoriety on 7 June 1788 when the townspeople assaulted troops of Louis XVI in the "Day of the Tiles". The people attacked the royal troops to prevent an expulsion of the notables of the city, which would have seriously endangered the economic prosperity of Grenoble. Following these events, the Assembly of Vizille took place. Its members organized the meeting of the old Estates General, thus beginning the French Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenoble#From_Louis_XIV_to_the...

From the French Revolution to the PC and internet revolution

The article is old and since he hasn't slowed down, there's more: https://bellard.org/ including QuickJS, and embedable JavaScript engine: https://bellard.org/quickjs/

Let it be known, despite his lack of public activity and consistent refusal to interviews, Bellard is very kind.

I emailed him curious about attempts in browser development, replied within two days! Maybe that’s common than I think, I don’t email outside of work often.

Fabrice Bellard -- the programmer that makes John Carmack go "whoa, slow down buddy, let the rest of us catch up".

When anyone tells me that "there’s no such thing as a 10x programmer", he’s my go-to example.

The tech community is one of most interesting communities : on one hand there are overwhelmingly evangelists saying your language is “dead”, on the other hand that “dead” language is used by heroes who are changing the world. And both parties are striving even though what they are saying are obviously contradictory.

I guess he just showed us how to make a point without making a point.

Heroes wear many capes - don’t forget about the person that just spent 4000 hours creating an application with complex menu’s and logic for a specific domain.

The right person can be extremely productive and generate incredible value anywhere, but often it just isn’t as sexy as compression algorithms.

A tip of my hat to all you hard working talented people out there.

Love bellard. Another super hero programmer Justin Frankel doesn't get nearly as much press.

My constant response reading about Bellard is "woah wait, be made that too?".

It's a bit of a bummer he doesn't seem to like interviews, since there's probably a lot that could be learned about his serial FOSS-entrepreneurship.

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