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"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am." Hedging the claim with a lot of qualifiers. What's wrong with admitting someone is a better pro
by copperx 4mo ago
"He is almost certainly a better overall programmer than I am."
Hedging the claim with a lot of qualifiers. What's wrong with admitting someone is a better programmer? even giving someone else the benefit of the doubt?
- KeplerBoy 4mo agoTrue, it's a weird thing to say. I am in no position to rank them, I assume they are both excellent at their niches (granted bellard seems to be interested in a lot of niches) but it never hurt anybody to be humble in this position.
- saidnooneever 4mo agoits because carmacl enjoys a lot of fame around his tricks. ppl get like that.
- vkazanov 4mo agoWell, carmack is THE game dev of 90s and 2000s fame. His 2d/3d engine work was outstanding back in the day. Bellard did multiple breakthroughs: ffmpeg, qemu, tcc, jslinux, a state of the art FFT algorithm. I probable skipped a few. With all due respect to carmack, a single ballard's projects would put anybody into the eternal hall of programmers fame right next to Linus, Carmack, Stallman, the Bell labs crowd and others. i do understand how carmack did what he did logistically (time, effort, skills, compensation)... Fabrice is just out of this world. When? How? Why? No idea.
- fmajid 4mo agoHe is also a mathematician, having invented a new algorithm for calculating the digits of pi
- nickcw 4mo agoHere is his paper on it which is a little 2 pager: https://bellard.org/pi/pi_bin.pdf https://bellard.org/pi/pi_bin.pdf Though I have to say the last line of the proof "...which gives (1) by reordering the terms" took me much head scratching to understand!
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- cloudfudge 4mo agoI think "he's almost certainly a better programmer than me" is a double form of humility: first, he's assuming that Fabrice Bellard is a better programmer than him based on the evidence and reputation, but he's also admitting that he doesn't have direct knowledge of this. Hence "almost certainly."
- evilturnip 4mo agoI suspect being a "better programmer" cannot be said unequivocally at their level. At that percentile of achievement, it depends on the specific dimension you are talking about. It's true of the highest skill in any field.
- fnordpiglet 4mo agoI more suspect he is not just a better programmer but has a two orders of magnitude smaller ego.
- sevg 4mo agoHe says that Bellard is a better overall programmer, and for some reason you take this as evidence of a lack of humility?
- manmal 4mo agoCarmack might think that there are certain areas he will be better due to decades of experience. Overall programmer isn’t a bad qualifier at all, it’s actually making it sound less offhand and more honest.
- dofm 4mo ago1) Bellard is 2) avoid qualifiers in personal compliments (unless ironic)
- DonHopkins 4mo ago"You will be lucky to get this man to work for you."
- manmal 4mo agoI don’t agree with 2). It’s ok to qualify. Sounds sycophantic to not do it.
- dofm 4mo agoYou can find a formulation that doesn't sound sycophantic without including a qualifier that could be misinterpreted as backhanded, because on a bad day it will be. (Especially if you are complimenting a person with ADHD.)
- keybored 4mo agoCarmack seems arrogant[1]. Which is why I take that statement as high praise. It’s also a nod to his own fame. [1] This is based on Masters of Doom. And the anecdotes are probably from the 90’s. And being arrogant does not mean that being confident in one’s ability is unjustified or that they are in fact not skilled. Being arrogant and being highly skilled are completely orthogonal.
- audunw 4mo agoDepends on what we mean by programmer. Fabrice is more clever and faster, I guess. But John Carmack is in my mind a better software engineer. He writes elegant code that can be used and maintained for a long time. At least from Quake 2ish, but you can see signs of solid code architecture already in Doom. Doom code will live almost as-is forever. The code Fabrice wrote for ffmpeg has been entirely replaced
- jimbob45 4mo agoYou’re not the only one who noticed. I think the unspoken idea is that Carmack thinks he’s better without ever having met him or seen his code at all. That deserves a few qualifiers.
- account42 4mo agoIt's just a tweet, no need to over-analyze everything.
- copperx 4mo agoCarmack is the one over analyzing the praise he hands out.
- Capricorn2481 4mo agoThis is truly the most non-controversy I have ever seen on here. I don't know what you drank this morning.
- FartyMcFarter 4mo agoProgrammers are notoriously nitpicky, and avoid making absolute statements in most cases (wait, I'm doing it too!). This is because we've been trained to be humble by the machines we work with. Computers expose a lot of our mistakes, and over time they remove any illusion that we can be quickly confident about things. I would take the qualifiers in his post as an indication of his general disinclination towards making absolute statements, not as a lack of humility.
- copperx 4mo agoSure, but what are the consequences of not being accurate in this case? praising someone undeservedly? Saying someone is better at something than you? That's unacceptable! Bring out the surgically precise praise!