Comment by alexdowad
1 day ago
> Quite impressive...
Yes, quite! Monsieur Bellard is a legend of computer programming. It would be hard to think of another programmer whose body of public work is more impressive than FB.
Unfortunate that he doesn't seem to write publicly about how he thinks about software. I've never seen him as a guest on any podcast either.
I have long wondered who the "Charlie Gordon" who seems to collaborate with him on everything is. Googling the name brings up a young ballet dancer from England, but I doubt that's the person in question.
> It would be hard to think of another programmer whose body of public work is more impressive than FB.
Not many, but these do come to mind: Linus Torvalds, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Donald Knuth, Rob Pike. But yeah, it’s rarefied air up there.
These are greats in their own domains. But Fabrice Bellard's greatness lies in breadth and depth in varied domains. That is what makes him unique.
See also - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46372370
It would be odd, but that name does ring a bell, Charlie Gordon is the central character in the ever poignant, Flowers for Algernon.
Maybe Bellard identifies with the genius, but fears the loss of it.
In the QuickJS github repo there are commits from Charlie Gordon's github profile, https://github.com/chqrlie
He totally deserves this ACM award which still waits to be awarded.
> It would be hard to think of another programmer whose body of public work is more impressive than FB.
I am of the firm belief that "Monsieur Fabrice Bellard" is not one person but a group of programmers writing under this nom de plume like "Nicolas Bourbaki" was in Mathematics ;-)
I don't know of any other programmer who has similar breadth and depth in so many varied domains. Just look at his website - https://bellard.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard No self-aggrandizing stuff etc. but only tech. He is an ideal for all of us to strive for.
Watson's comment on how Sherlock Holmes made him feel can be rephrased in this context as;
"I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours [i.e. fellow programmers], but I was [and am] always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with [the works of Fabrice Bellard]."
PS: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a Super-Productive Programmer - https://web.archive.org/web/20210128085300/https://smartbear...
PPS: Fabrice Bellard: A Computer Science Pioneer - https://www.scribd.com/document/511765517/Fabrice-Bellard-In... (pretty good long article)
There are a few others that are at least somewhat comparable. Justine Tunney comes to mind (especially the Cosmopolitan family of projects).
The last link has more info than I've seen elsewhere. Here's an altenative link with PDF download. https://www.ipaidia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/117-2020-f...
Thanks. Post it to HN since i don't think most folks know of this. It would be a shame to have it be buried in the comments.