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Comment by booi | Hacker News Reader

If there were a software engineering hall of fame, I nominate Fabrice.

rare occasion where he gained a legendary status based purely on his work, I dont think I ever saw even a written interview with the guy

He is a private man that does not like the spotlight IIUC. He refuses most requests for interviews, but they do exist.

https://www.macplus.net/depeche-82364-interview-le-createur-...

https://www.mo4tech.com/fabrice-bellard-one-man-is-worth-a-t... (few quotes, more like a profile piece)

He keeps a low profile and let his work speak for itself.

He really is brilliant.

He has probably has no time for interviews and just focuses on working on his many projects.

I often think the world would be a better place if more people in the tech industry follow this philosophy.

I think this is such an important point. I know all about Bellard's main works. I actually have no idea what he looks like, I've also never seen an interview with him, and I've never read about his specific philosophies when it comes to different software engineering topics. In a world of never-ending bloviations from "influencers" and "thought leaders" it's so awesome to see a real example of true excellence.

Bellard it the most genius programmer to ever exist, and the least known compared to other pseudo stars.

His consistency and craftsmanship is amazing.

Being an engineer and coding at this stage/level is just remarkable- sadly this trade craft is missing in most (big?) companies as you get promoted away into oblivion.

There is! ACM grants several awards for scientists and more.

One such award is the Turing Award [1], given "for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

Possibly more relevant is the "ACM Software System Award": https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ACM_Software_Syst...

Linux and Torvalds hasn't gotten one?

The Turing Award is given for breakthroughs in computer science, not for "most productive programmer of all time", and it wouldn't be appropriate for Ballard.

Fabrice is certainly very skilled in CS, but his achievements are more in software implementation IMO.

AIUI the Turing award is primarily CS focused.

If there were some form of "developed contributions to computing" award, his name is definitely up there. I think there could be a need for such an award - for people who reliably have created the foundations of modern computing. Otherwise it's almost always things from an academic context, which can be a little too abstract.

Between ffmpeg and qemu, I always think of https://xkcd.com/2347/ when I see Fabrice's work. Especially since ffmpeg provides the backbone of almost all video streaming systems today.

Except that ffmpeg and qemu are not maintained by Fabrice. He's one of the greatest programmers but he's not maintaining the internet.

I suppose that if he were to maintain any of these projects, we would never see the new frontiers he has been conquering.

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