

Fabrice Bellard [pdf] - nkurz
http://www.freearchive.org/o/55dfc9935a719fc36ab1d16567972732c2db1fd7d7e3826fd73ee07e4c3c7d0b

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Locke1689
Heh, funny to see this still floating around. This is the first draft of a
paper I wrote with a partner for the "breadth and history of computer science"
(EECS 101) class at Northwestern University my freshman year. At the time I
found myself having just finished submitting a handful of patches to the
FFMpeg project the year before I entered college, just finished a major patch
for QEMU that winter, and using tinycc in a dumb project for using distcc to
quickly find compile errors in huge C projects. When my professor/advisor put
up this assignment and asked us to chose a notable character in the field I of
course jumped at the chance to get to know the man as well as I had gotten to
know his work.

To be honest, I'm a tad ashamed at some of the grammar and spelling mistakes
in that draft. As you can see from the citation style and LaTeX footer, it was
suggested by my advisor that I submit a draft to one of the general ACM
journals for publication, but I never got around to it, so I never fully
proofed the paper either.

~~~
adulau
It's really funny. I built freearchive.org for archiving my del.icio.us
bookmarks (tagged with fa:archive). I tagged your draft sometimes ago
(<http://www.delicious.com/adulau/fa:archive+qemu>) just because it was a good
summary of Fabrice works. But I was not really expecting the archive to be
useful for someone else...

------
rimantas
(X = E ́cole Polytechnique)

    
    
      X stresses a curriculum of breadth, rather than depth. Although the university
      specializes in engineering, students are required to take classes in sports and
      humanities. Students spend the first four years studying a wide undergraduate
      curriculum before their year of military service and then spend the remaining year
      exclusively studying their specific major.
      <…>
      The goal of the X curriculum is to develop critical thinking skills rather than
      preparation for an engineering occupation.
    

We still have system similar to this. Too bad many students don't like it :( I
often read and hear cries "we ain't gonna need this". Not going to need
brains? And yes, critical thinking involves the knowledge of some trivia.

~~~
vixen99
But why do French universities appear to perform relatively poorly in several
international university rankings?

~~~
_delirium
Anecdotal, but some French computer scientists I know think language is one
factor for their relative invisibility: basically everything is done in
French, and much of it is _required_ to be in French. The increasing practice
in some other European countries is to allow a greater scope for English in
the sciences and engineering.

In particular, any official thesis or report must be in French, which means
that the thesis itself won't be widely read/cited internationally, _and_ means
that it can't be directly chopped up to make English-language journal
articles; the student would have to translate their own thesis to republish
parts of it in journals. In addition, they aren't generally required to be
able to: since everything official is done in French, it's not necessary for a
student to have English writing skills of a level sufficient to write for a
scientific journal (though they do generally need English _reading_ skills
sufficient to read papers in their area).

~~~
requinot59
_> basically everything is done in French, and much of it is _required _to be
in French._

« La langue de la République est le français. » ("The language of the Republic
is French"), first sentence of the second article of the French Republic
Constitution (see
[http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITE...](http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006071194)).

Since universities are public, so republican, schools, it makes sense to make
them apply and respect the constitution.

The idea is that any French citizen is able to have access, read and
understand any published university thesis (PhD), since they paid for them
(via taxes). In the same vein, students of the École Polytechnique are
required to work 5 years for the State after their studies, since the State
paid such a good formation to them.

French can always go to private school (or emigrate) if they don't agree with
that.

~~~
roel_v
"Since universities are public, so republican, schools, it makes sense to make
them apply and respect the constitution."

Many constitutions have a clause like that. Encouraging international
visibility, which requires English language skills, is not contrary to that.

"French can always go to private school (or emigrate) if they don't agree with
that."

The point is that they're cutting off their nose to spite their faces. French
researchers and students, and citizens more in general, are isolated in their
own little world because their strange sense of 'pride' is causing them to be
so. I don't care, really; but I do sometimes feel sympathy for those that I
talk to who realize this and (rightfully) blame the system for their lowered
chances at international success.

~~~
requinot59
_> Encouraging international visibility, which requires English language
skills, is not contrary to that._

No, it's not, and international visibility is obviously a good thing! But
there is a problem if a PhD is published _only_ in english, because then there
might be French citizens who will not be able to read a work they paid for
(remember, the public education system is funded by the taxpayers-citizens).
Since most people yelling about the "language restriction" problem actually
imply that they should be able to publish in english _only_ , I did recall
that this would be unconstitutional in France. _Additionally_ publishing in
english has never been forbidden or discouraged!

 _> I do sometimes feel sympathy for those that I talk to who realize this and
(rightfully) blame the system for their lowered chances at international
success._

This system is the application of the law. The French law is the consensus of
all the French citizens on the way they want to live all together. If you,
individually, don't like the law, you can militate for a change (possible
since France is a democracy), or leave the country, if you really can't live
with this general consensus. _Dura lex sed lex_.

In this specific case, you can also just go to a private school which will let
you write in english or whatever. Sure, you'll have to pay there; sorry, you
can't have the free public education with no duties in return in France.

Ideologically speaking, the French education system is very egalitarian and
very meritocratic. Lots of people don't agree with it (the majority still
does). That's why the private schools were allowed (after a violent public
debate). But it's a chosen, working and interesting system. Yes, you can
_"rightfully blame the system"_ , in the sense that you have the right to
disagree, but otherwise it's not any more _"rightful"_ to blame it than to
blame any other working system (e.g: the US one). It's just a different
conception of education and its place in the society.

~~~
uriel
> But there is a problem if a PhD is published only in english, because then
> there might be French citizens who will not be able to read a work they paid
> for (remember, the public education system is funded by the taxpayers-
> citizens).

Maybe those citizens should learn English.

But one of the main reasons why so many people in France don't speak English
is precisely their broken educational system. (This is not exclusive to
France, Spain for example is very similar.)

> Ideologically speaking, the French education system is very egalitarian and
> very meritocratic.

I don't see how a system can be both egalitarian and meritocratic.

> But it's a chosen, working and interesting system.

It is a system that fails the majority of the population ans only benefits the
extremely small elite that gets to go to the Grandes Écoles.

~~~
palsecam
"I don't see how a system can be both egalitarian and meritocratic."

Egalitarian: education is free for all, and richs and poors (normally) go to
the same school, the one of their town, until at least 16. Egality of chance.

Meritocratic: but after 16, you go to the university or a grande école
according to your abilities/ranks. The best can go to Polytechnique, the good
can go to a grande école or a good university, the rest goes to the other
universities (and it's still free for all).

It doesn't matter if your parents are poor and if you were born in the country
and not in Paris, if you're great you can go to Polytechnique. And no matter
how rich the parents, if you suck, you won't go to Polytechnique.

------
wbhart
Fabrice is a rare genius of immense proportions. Although the summary mentions
some of his former work on the FFT and computing Pi, it was written before his
more recent record breaking feat:

<http://bellard.org/pi/pi2700e9/>

The linux kernel in a browser blows my mind. This is surely an immense amount
of work. How does a mere mortal find the time!

And don't forget his IOCC entry (in 2048 bytes) of a self compiling C
compiler:

<http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2001/bellard.hint>

------
mcobrien
I like the reference given in the first paragraph:

    
    
      These computer scientists have become personalities as well as authors,
      earning universal respect and sometimes a cult Following. [Munroe]
    

Munroe is listed in the bibliography as <http://xkcd.com/163/>

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wyclif
As mentioned by someone in the "boot the Linux kernel in your browser" thread,
don't read this if you are patting yourself on the back (meaning you should
read it: all of it).

Fascinating; I had read very little about him before this, so thanks.

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astrange
I haven't checked git blame, but I suspect most of the FFmpeg features
ascribed to him were actually written by Michael Niedermayer.

Of course he did write it, but it's quite different now or even in 2004 than
it was at the beginning.

~~~
Locke1689
Sure, Michael has had a significant (defining) contribution. I don't think
that really makes a difference for these purposes though.

------
markokocic
I knew him only for TinyCC, but looking at everything he accomplished I can
see him as a pure coding genius.

~~~
robertk
Don't.

[http://deconstructinggenius.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/there-i...](http://deconstructinggenius.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/there-
is-no-magic/)

~~~
valisystem
Are you really sure ? <http://bellard.org/dvbt/>

------
nl
Does anyone know where he works?

I've done a bit of Googling and can't find anything.

~~~
pluies
It's been suggested on the other thread that he works at Netgem:
<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netgem> (sorry, the link is in French, but it's
been deleted from Wikipedia EN). Wikipedia FR for Fabrice Bellard supports
this claim.

A quick google for "fabrice bellard netgem" shows his email address at Netgem
and a slew of C header/source files copyrighted Netgem and written by him, so
he was definitely working there at some point.

------
Tycho
If you combined this guy with Linus Torvalds and [insert charismatic Twitter-
celebrity hacker of choice here], you would have Manfred Macx.

