

Q&A With Nine Great Programmers - damian2000
http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/09/q-with-nine-great-programmers.html

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stmpjmpr
I'm not sure why Guido Van Rossum bothered to answer at all.

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RivieraKid
I really liked his answers.

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yen223
Considering the language he works on is named after Monty Python, his answers
do seem rather appropriate.

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naturalethic
DHH is completely out of his league, yet probably makes more money than all of
them.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, DHH is an amazing businessman and a very smart guy.

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patio11
Without specific reference to the income of any particular individuals,
particularly individuals with HN accounts, there is an important lesson here
for folks who think that being world-class in programming is the primary
rewarding career path for "programmers."

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statictype
I think you mean the lesson is for people who thing being a world-class
programmer is the primary rewarding career path for 'making money' (or being
successful where 'success' is defined as 'money').

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loumf
How about freedom to pick employers and projects?

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statictype
If you're already working on what you like, then why chase after money to...
have the luxury of working on what you like?

Note that I'm _not_ saying this is how everyone should be (I'm not, myself)
but its a perfectly reasonable lifestyle.

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andreipop
Big fan of this post, for the format more than anything. I find these types of
posts often hard to contextualize without solid reference points, and it helps
having differing opinions side by side.

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yoduh
It's funny what Torvalds said about "good taste" because I have had the same
sort of idea for years. But I'd never heard any programmer articulate it as
such. I also call it "sensibilities". I have no clue if his idea of what is
"good taste" is even remotely similar to mine, but it's interesting that he
also thinks about this notion of "good taste". I can eliminate programmers and
programs very quickly using this sort of qualitative assessment. It might not
even be necessary to see any code. Just knowing how they would approach a
problem, how they would design a solution (Rube Goldberg machine), and of
course what language they would use says something about their "tastes". It's
not so much a matter of what they do or don't know how to do, it's their
selections from among different choices. Imagine hypothetically a programmer
knows every language and can implement any design. The language he chooses and
the design he chooses tells us about his "taste".

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btbuilder
I don't believe he said he liked VB, he actually said as a language it isn't
great. What he did say is that the way it simplified database access gave us
something extremely powerful and influential even though it was not (and
isn't) seen as particularly disruptive or new. This seems inline with other
statements from Linus w.r.t. the value of C++ and OOP in general. A very
pragmatic man. I believe it also aligns with many of the answers to what will
be the "next big thing.".

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spenczar5
Bjarne Stroustrup's favorite band is the Dixie Chicks. For some reason, this
just makes me giggle uncontrollably.

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biafra
Interesting how Mobile Computing was not in their radar in 2006. I wonder if
it would be today.

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yen223
Steve Yegge's statement about how programming in the "future" will shift away
from desktop apps and towards web-based applications strikes me as being the
most prescient.

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damian2000
Yeah Steve Yegge came across to me as someone who's been in the trenches in
the real world of software development for a significant part of his career,
while still keeping up with the latest technologies. Not to detract from any
of the others' achievements, but some of them have remained primarily focused
on their particular field of expertise.

The first paragraph of his wikipedia article bears this out:

"Yegge has two decades of industry experience, developing across domains
including embedded operating systems, scalable e-commerce systems,
applications for mobile devices, and software productivity tools. In his
career he has worked for Amazon.com and Google among others."

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nodesocket
Somehow I figured that Linus still uses Pine to read e-mail.

