Interview with Jon Skeet | Hacker News Reader

Interview with Jon Skeet

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96 pointseddie_3100330 comments

As a fellow Brit and as someone working in C# everyday, Jon Skeet is somewhat of a personal hero of mine. I can't count the number of times I've turned to StackOverflow and found the answer to have be written by him. Chappeau!

Interestingly we appear to have had similar paths to get to our careers. I too started off with BASIC and the BBC B Micro. I then went on to study Computer Science at GCSE, A-Level and then at university. Jon must be a similar age to me, so I'm guessing he also was one of the first to take GCSE's after the UK switched from the 'O-level' (1990-1991).

Great little interview. Thanks for sharing @eddie_31003.

Snap! Did my comp sci GCSE in 1990.

As did I, though I started with a Commodore VIC-20.

How was it? I didn't have an option to take CS either for GCSE or A-Level. There was IT but most university departments actually discouraged it and recommended just taking science and maths.

To be honest it was so long ago I can't really remember too much. I recall trying to learn SQL and relational theory but just not getting it and thinking I would never use it anyway - how naive I was! That might have been A-Level.

They taught us BASIC, I can't remember the computers we had, I don't think they were popular ones. I do remember one of my colleagues really struggled with his practical project because he named all his variables a, aa, aaa, aaaa and so on. There was a maximum variable length of 8 characters so things went all wrong when he needed to use 9 variables. I don't think we were taught anything about quality software development, using decent variable names, algorithms etc..

Overall I did find the courses incredibly easy and I aced both without even trying. It was university where things started to get a bit more challenging.

I did science and maths as well, I did get much more out of those courses.

We got taught lots of basic stuff in GCSE. I remember high level stuff about computer parrts, peripherals, etc. Not much about networking. All very 'fluffy'.

A-level started more programming. We learnt Turbo Pascal (6 maybe?). I wrote my own DOS based windowing app for a sailing (racing) management tool. .

off-topic, but it always amaze me how 'chappeau' finished with 2 'p', as did a lot of English words derived from middle/old french (single to double-n or double-p are common).

Out of curiosity from a non-native speaker : does the double-p makes it more idiomatic for native English speakers ?

It's not an English word

Quite apart from his obvious technical chops, I've always been impressed by Jon Skeet's unfailing politeness and helpfulness. He's a real role model to developers.

Whatta guy!

This guy has always impressed me. He works on Java at Google and spends a large chunk of time being a C# and .NET expert. Obviously C# and Java are semantically close to the point of nearly interchangeable, but the devil is in the details and he seems to have them down.

Java is years behind C# in most aspects. Of course it doesn't mean it follows the same path, but there's less to learn if you switch from (modern) C# to Java than the other way round.

I envy the way he manages to balance all commitments in his life. Pretty amazing.

Me too. I find myself frustrated with my inability to balance stuff every now and then. I would love to sit with Jon and just have him say "here.. here's where you are doing it wrong" and then find enlightenment. :D

I would vote for him as the most decent & helpful guy on Stackoverflow. I've always found his tone humble, which isn't very common these days. Really glad to have people like him around.

I'm guessing this is what they mean by a 10x programmer? :-)

And the Chuck Norris of programming :)

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts

I'm vaguely aware of Jon Skeet from echoes from the Windows dev world, from which I've largely stayed detached.

Can someone explain the significance of Jon Skeet, preferebly in terms of "Facts" in the style of Bruce Schneier's [1] or Jeff Dean's [2]?

[1] http://www.schneierfacts.com/ [2] http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts

Jon Skeet is a frequent contributor to StackOverflow.com[0], where he is known for being able to answer highly obscure questions with equally obscure answers[1].

[0] http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtractin...

He's also, kind of, known for being the top user in terms of reputation points.

It's a little like there's Jon Skeet, then there's nothing for a while, then there's somebody else. His average reputation increase per day is often more than 300. Of course, 200 is the typical "cap" on daily increase, but somehow he Skeets around that. He'll probably reach a million points this year.

Not that I think reputation points on Stack Overflow is very interesting or meaningful, of course. :)

Has Jon Skeet reached one million yet: http://www.hasjonskeetreachedonemillionyet.com Not quite this year, but soon.

(Ps, add your own id to see when you reach it: http://www.hasjonskeetreachedonemillionyet.com/155689 Mine is in quite a few years)

Oh, yay, in 2046. I guess I should start answering a few questions again.

Stack Exchange has a convenient list:

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts

He has also written an excellent C# book, C# in depth http://csharpindepth.com/ .

Yes, this book is a great one. It makes it easy to understand many of the topics.

Most good C# answers on the best dev Q&A website. Without working for Microsoft.

He was well known as an MVP on the C# newsgroups at MS before SO started, too.

Nice interview, I always enjoy reading his contributions on StackOverflow. I don't always understand what even the problem at hand is, but it's just a fascinating exercise to read some of his responses and the obscure facts behind them.

Science Fact: Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions [0]

0: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/537093

I thought that Google engineers weren't allowed to use Windows.

Google produces some software for Windows - e.g. Chrome. How did you think they did that if they weren't allowed to use the OS?

Sorry, I was just being sarcastic about how Google doesn't allow broad Windows usage, allegedly because they're afraid of Chinese hackers. I just always thought it was a bullshit reason that was trumped up to make Microsoft look bad.

(edited for clarity)

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