4 ms·

Ludvig Strigeus, the creator of ScummVM, also made µTorrent and was an early employee of Spotify after Daniel Ek, one of Spotify's founders and CEO, bought µTor

Ludvig Strigeus, the creator of ScummVM, also made µTorrent and was an early employee of Spotify after Daniel Ek, one of Spotify's founders and CEO, bought µTorrent as an acqui-hire. He got 5% of the shares before their IPO and still works there. So that's three impactful programs from the same person.

LeoPanthera 5y ago
It’s a real shame that μTorrent became adware, but qBitTorrent became a high quality alternative.
- snvzz 5y ago
  qbittorrent is bloated. The spiritual successor for µtorrent is picotorrent.
  - hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
    The download file for qbittorrent is half the size of picotorrent? https://www.fosshub.com/qBittorrent.html https://www.fosshub.com/qBittorrent.html
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    PicoTorrent is Windows-only.
    - snvzz 5y ago
      Just like µTorrent. As the predecessor, it also works on wine.
      - svth 5y ago
        µTorrent was available as a native macOS app for a long time. They dropped support in macOS Catalina. Apparently going 64-bit was too hard. Now they just offer some shitty web client.
xorcist 5y ago
Don't forget OpenTTD!
hardwaregeek 5y ago
The Spotify podcast[1] details his hiring and the impact he had on the initial desktop application. Seems like it was a really impressively engineered piece of software. They did a lot of customization and hacking on protocols/encodings to make playing a song instant [1]: https://open.spotify.com/show/3L9tzrt0CthF6hNkxYIeSB?si=h7Z1i5sgSI6-D5S-6a62qg&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/show/3L9tzrt0CthF6hNkxYIeSB?si=h7Z1...
lazyjeff 5y ago
Ludvig is one of the best systems-level computer programmers of this era. His focus is on optimization in every way has been the secret to success for these projects; something that is sadly missing in most software these days. µTorrent came about when other torrent software was heavy so it took over the market. The Spotify Desktop client came when instant streaming music online was a lot more difficult than it is now, and the case for ScummVM is obvious. He was one of those assembly and C win32 programmers who wrote code as close to the OS as possible, even when .NET and Java and even MFC had major marketing pushes. I was on a puzzle team with him and he was our secret weapon, programming brute force "scripts" to find the solution before anyone could solve it logically, winning us the competition handily. And I also remember (wrongly) discouraging him from making µTorrent because I felt it was already a saturated field. Luckily he did not pay attention to my suggestion.
- flatiron 5y ago
  I love when people disagree and win! That Bitcoin thing? Nah I wouldn’t buy them for over a dollar. I think that’s probably the highest it’ll ever go.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

It’s a real shame that μTorrent became adware, but qBitTorrent became a high quality alternative.

snvzz 5y ago
qbittorrent is bloated. The spiritual successor for µtorrent is picotorrent.
- hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  The download file for qbittorrent is half the size of picotorrent? https://www.fosshub.com/qBittorrent.html https://www.fosshub.com/qBittorrent.html
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  PicoTorrent is Windows-only.
  - snvzz 5y ago
    Just like µTorrent. As the predecessor, it also works on wine.
    - svth 5y ago
      µTorrent was available as a native macOS app for a long time. They dropped support in macOS Catalina. Apparently going 64-bit was too hard. Now they just offer some shitty web client.

xorcist 5y ago

Don't forget OpenTTD!

hardwaregeek 5y ago

The Spotify podcast[1] details his hiring and the impact he had on the initial desktop application. Seems like it was a really impressively engineered piece of software. They did a lot of customization and hacking on protocols/encodings to make playing a song instant [1]: https://open.spotify.com/show/3L9tzrt0CthF6hNkxYIeSB?si=h7Z1i5sgSI6-D5S-6a62qg&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/show/3L9tzrt0CthF6hNkxYIeSB?si=h7Z1...

lazyjeff 5y ago

Ludvig is one of the best systems-level computer programmers of this era. His focus is on optimization in every way has been the secret to success for these projects; something that is sadly missing in most software these days. µTorrent came about when other torrent software was heavy so it took over the market. The Spotify Desktop client came when instant streaming music online was a lot more difficult than it is now, and the case for ScummVM is obvious. He was one of those assembly and C win32 programmers who wrote code as close to the OS as possible, even when .NET and Java and even MFC had major marketing pushes. I was on a puzzle team with him and he was our secret weapon, programming brute force "scripts" to find the solution before anyone could solve it logically, winning us the competition handily. And I also remember (wrongly) discouraging him from making µTorrent because I felt it was already a saturated field. Luckily he did not pay attention to my suggestion.

flatiron 5y ago
I love when people disagree and win! That Bitcoin thing? Nah I wouldn’t buy them for over a dollar. I think that’s probably the highest it’ll ever go.