4 ms·
Ask HN: Who is the best computer programmer of all times?
My personal favorite is Fabrice Bellard.
- jleyank 3mo agoYou'd have to come up with the criteria for "best" but as an old hacker, "from MIT or Bell Labs" comes to mind as where to look. Maybe some of their spinoffs, but those sites did amazing things with basically nothing.
- xqb64 3mo agoYeah. Andy Tanenbaum described studying at MIT as "drinking from a fire hose". Do we have someone who both got their degree from MIT and worked at Bell Labs? That'd be an interesting combo.
- bdangubic 3mo agoMike Evanston
- rstagi 3mo ago"best" is a relative term, but in terms of technology we all use every day I would say either Linus Torvalds or Jeff Dean are up there among the best for sure
- xqb64 3mo agoSort of, the one who, when left stranded on a desert island, would make a CPU out of sand, write software for it, including the entire TCP/IP stack, and email someone to come get them.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- chairmansteve 3mo agoD. Richard Hipp is up there for me. I love the minimalism of his programs, SQLLite and Fossil. Also involved in Tcl, my favourite language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp
- __patchbit__ 3mo agoRMS
- jr_isidore 3mo ago[dead]
- boho_derogatory 3mo agoIn case you weren't being ironic, his C code was journeyman-like in the 80s and positively atrocious by modern standards.
- dlcarrier 3mo agoThat's far too subjective of a question to have a specific answer, but obviously it's Melvin Kaye: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
- genxy 3mo agoYou will never know, for all they do is delete and refactor.
- LocalH 3mo agoAny of the top coders from the major demoscenes.
- jerhewet 3mo agoFabrice Bellard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
- smallduck 3mo agoNasir Gebelli. Wrote Apple 2 games by dictating bytes typed into the mini-assembler, went on to write/co-design the early Final Fantasy titles. Legend.