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> A French engineer who lives quietly in Paris has spent 30 years writing software that the entire internet now runs on without knowing his name. ... do tech p
by swiftcoder 4mo ago
> A French engineer who lives quietly in Paris has spent 30 years writing software that the entire internet now runs on without knowing his name.
... do tech people really not know who Fabrice Bellard is?
He's kind of a household name in a lot of programming circles
- pdpi 4mo ago"Tech people" aren't one single homogeneous mass. His name is unlikely to show up in the same conversation as, say, DHH.
- jdsnape 4mo agoI knew of Fabrice, and have admired him for many years…but who is DHH?
- otabdeveloper4 4mo agoYeah, same.
- konart 4mo agoRuby on Rails creator (among other things).
- Bigpet 4mo agoIf you did "web stuff" in the early 2000s (like 2005-2010). You'd probably know who he is. He did Ruby on Rails, a backend web framework. But that was also very Start-up and America focussed. So if you did web dev in some other country and didn't have colleagues who were into that culture you still might've missed the name.
- konart 4mo agoTBH the biggest difference is him being more vocal. I'm pretty sure most of the people who did "web stuff" at the time and used twitter (key point maybe) know him simply because you'd often see his tweets. Regardless of coutry (I'm from Russia, for exampl)
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoThere was a big RoR scene in Glasgow in the mid-2000s, but there were a few of us that were resolutely Django. I stand by that decision, for various reasons. Not least being that "Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby" gave me the ick.
- hdgvhicv 4mo agoRu y was something that one guy tinkered with briefly. It was less used than Perl. Java and php was what tools were built in at my company.
- noufalibrahim 4mo agoDHH markets himself much better. His company (basecamp), in a sense, revolves around his public persona and he's unapologetic about this. It's the same with all of his projects (e.g. Omarchy recently).
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- swiftcoder 4mo agoTo be fair, I don't think anyone outside the Ruby community knew who DHH was until his politics went viral on twitter
- lproven 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson
- _zoltan_ 4mo agoDHH is even less known, don't kid yourself.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoOh DHH is well known. We all know about DHH.
- DonHopkins 4mo agoJust that he's a douchebag, not what the letters stand for.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoI hope your middle name doesn't start with H ;-) We know it's not you.
- pdpi 4mo agoI'm not saying DHH is more widely known than Fabrice Bellard. I'm saying that it really depends on your audience. I can think of many colleagues over the years who would know who David is, but not Fabrice. (Also, I specifically chose DHH as somebody who's highly unlikely to show up in the same discussion as Fabrice Bellard, not because I'm a fan of his. Judging from the replies, I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations!)
- defrost 4mo agoThat's understood in the comment which explicitly indicates that there are many programming circles and that Bellard is known in a number of them (but not all). eg: I grew up in the Australian Kimberley region (kind of remote), spent decades in geophysical mapping, multi channel data processing, computational algebra, and other odd niches, have no real interest in SV, and am quite familiar with Bellard's work. No idea who DHH is though.
- a96 4mo agohttps://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-problem https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro... https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986 https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ...
- account42 4mo agoThat validates his point - barely anyone outside the ruby community would even know about DHH if he didn't manage to trigger the eternally outraged.
- a96 4mo agoOh, yes. That was a straight-face answer to "who DHH is", not anything to contradict or argue anyone's point. I never heard of the initialism in any other context either.
- hdgvhicv 4mo agoWhat is a DHH? A person?
- lproven 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson
- theshrike79 4mo agoI have an explicit rule not to meet or look up my heroes. Been burned way too many times. I don't need to know who is building VLC, curl, ffmpeg or any of the other essentials in my life. I just appreciate their work and pitch in some money if possible.
- bonzini 4mo agoYou'd be fine with Daniel Stenberg. :)
- theshrike79 4mo agoThere are multiple people I'm fine with in software circles - Daniel being one of them, but then we have Notch and DHH who used to be cool, but some of their current hot takes are kinda oof. Specifically way too many authors whose books I've loved have turned out to be not very good human beings. David Eddings and Neil Gaiman are pretty good examples of this.
- ryandrake 4mo agoRowling / Harry Potter comes to mind, too, and Heinlein. You need to be able to separate the artist from the art, the programmer from the program. It’s ok to appreciate a work even if you disagree with its creator’s morals or ethics.
- mschuster91 4mo ago> It’s ok to appreciate a work even if you disagree with its creator’s morals or ethics. In the case of Harry Potter... the perception of the work tends to follow the perception of the author. There's a bunch of issues with the original books that's widely seen as problematic today - character names seen as racist [1], enough problematic gender stereotypes to warrant half a dozen of academic papers of various quality, and last but not least antisemitism that continues even into modern works such as the shofar in Hogwarts Legacy [2]. I won't deny it, I enjoyed both the books and the movies, but it's ... not something I'd just hand over to my kids one day without having a serious talk with them beforehand. Back when I was young nobody cared too much (although I do member that at least in Germany, the goblins-jews analogy was discussed a bit), but nowadays... [1] https://7news.com.au/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-call-out-jk-rowling-over-cartoonishly-stereotypical-character-names-after-return-to-hogwarts-reunion-c-5178042 https://7news.com.au/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-call-ou... [2] https://theconversation.com/how-hogwarts-legacy-video-game-reinforces-antisemitic-scapegoating-with-goblins-202710 https://theconversation.com/how-hogwarts-legacy-video-game-r...
- _zoltan_ 4mo agono, most people wouldn't know. you're in an echo chamber if you think he is well known.
- dgellow 4mo agoCan we stop calling every niche an echo chamber?
- AussieWog93 4mo agoIt is an echo chamber if you think your niche is universal though.
- ninkendo 4mo ago“And quartz, of course” https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/
- edarchis 4mo agoI'll be honest. I discovered him with this post. And I studied in France. I am also familiar with his projects, the obfuscated C code contest and more. Just don't remember seeing his name. I guess that if people aren't loud on social media, people tend to ignore them. Respect to those who posted their praise of someone else on social media. We need more of this.
- WillAdams 4mo agoWhat percentage of the population are computer programmers? Welcome to that sub-group of the Lucky 10,000 today! https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- konart 4mo agoFirst time hearing the name too. >programming circles Well, not all tech people are part of some curcles I guess.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoAnd you can just email him. He's just this guy, that writes stuff, and likes to help answer questions about it.
- pantulis 4mo agoHe's a lifelong familiar name since the LZEXE days.
- keyle 4mo agoI've been around for a long time and I know of him. Most people don't bother looking up where stuff comes from.
- RicoElectrico 4mo agoThe HN bubble surfaces mainly those programmers who are either - active in the startup/VC scene - "indie hackers" - chasing platonic elegance with functional languages (for which the world at large doesn't care) - rewriting everything in Rust Fabrice doesn't seems to firmly fit any of this.
- mihaic 4mo agoI think I've known about him for 20 years right now, ever since I discovered his code to compute pi to an ungodly amount of digits. The man sure was prolific.