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> very few people are programmers at the level of a Linus Torvalds, Peter Norvig or Fabrice Bellard. I never really thought of Peter Norvig as a 'programmer' i

> very few people are programmers at the level of a Linus Torvalds, Peter Norvig or Fabrice Bellard. I never really thought of Peter Norvig as a 'programmer' in the sense of Linus Torvalds -- I always lumped Norvig more into the high minded computer scientist camp. It seems like the criteria by which one judges success in the two areas are very different.

jacquesm 11y ago
Read some of Norvigs code and tell me he's not a programmer, his stuff is some of the most elegant and efficient that I've ever seen.
- teacup50 11y ago
  Putting programmers on a pedestal fits with the YC culture of marketing via lionization of technology personalties, but it's counter-productive if your aim is to actually grow in the field. Hero worship blinds you to two simple facts, in almost all cases: - They're not doing anything you couldn't also do if you worked at it as hard as they have. - Like everyone, they're fallible, making mistakes, and may even not deserve the hero worship being heaped on them. Until you've worked as hard as they have to reach a sufficient level of understanding, you're not going to have as strong of a critical eye for where the erstwhile hero is doing it wrong. Better to put no-one on a pedestal (least of all yourself).
  - michaelwww 11y ago
    I'm sorry to disagree but you're wrong. There are better programmers than I, that no matter how hard I work I will never be as good as. Not everyone can be a Mozart or Mozart wouldn't be special.
    - jstuxx 11y ago
      It's not as black and white as you put. Linus may be great at writing operating systems kernels, he may be better than you or I are at it but he wouldn't be as good at designing machine learning artificial intelligence algorithms, if we had to put him in the shoes of the developers at Google which run the world's largest search engine he wouldn't now be objectively the best, neither would the Google developers do to well if they had to maintain the Linux kernel. Same thing with Mozart, he is one of the best composers in his genre of music but there are other genres as well.
    - teacup50 11y ago
      You'll never be as good if you think of people this way.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I'm not putting him on a pedestal at all. He's by objective standards simply one of the best programmers that I know of, just like Usain Bolt is an extremely fast runner.
    - teacup50 11y ago
      That is, by definition, a pedestal. It's not a useful metric by which to approach the world.

jacquesm 11y ago

Read some of Norvigs code and tell me he's not a programmer, his stuff is some of the most elegant and efficient that I've ever seen.

teacup50 11y ago
Putting programmers on a pedestal fits with the YC culture of marketing via lionization of technology personalties, but it's counter-productive if your aim is to actually grow in the field. Hero worship blinds you to two simple facts, in almost all cases: - They're not doing anything you couldn't also do if you worked at it as hard as they have. - Like everyone, they're fallible, making mistakes, and may even not deserve the hero worship being heaped on them. Until you've worked as hard as they have to reach a sufficient level of understanding, you're not going to have as strong of a critical eye for where the erstwhile hero is doing it wrong. Better to put no-one on a pedestal (least of all yourself).
- michaelwww 11y ago
  I'm sorry to disagree but you're wrong. There are better programmers than I, that no matter how hard I work I will never be as good as. Not everyone can be a Mozart or Mozart wouldn't be special.
  - jstuxx 11y ago
    It's not as black and white as you put. Linus may be great at writing operating systems kernels, he may be better than you or I are at it but he wouldn't be as good at designing machine learning artificial intelligence algorithms, if we had to put him in the shoes of the developers at Google which run the world's largest search engine he wouldn't now be objectively the best, neither would the Google developers do to well if they had to maintain the Linux kernel. Same thing with Mozart, he is one of the best composers in his genre of music but there are other genres as well.
  - teacup50 11y ago
    You'll never be as good if you think of people this way.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I'm not putting him on a pedestal at all. He's by objective standards simply one of the best programmers that I know of, just like Usain Bolt is an extremely fast runner.
  - teacup50 11y ago
    That is, by definition, a pedestal. It's not a useful metric by which to approach the world.