
Ask HN: Who's your role model? - haack
Who is your role model and why? I&#x27;ll allow fictional and people no longer alive.
======
jib
I dont have one. There are some people who have some good traits and habits
that I would like to acquire, but I dont get the role model thing. To me it is
about process rather than person. "This guy has a great way of doing X" rather
than "I want to be like this specific person".

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ghh
Fabrice Bellard [1,2] should be on this list. Author of QEMU and FFMPEG among
other open source projects that have been useful to a lot of people. Also,
author of jslinux [3].

[1] [http://bellard.org/](http://bellard.org/)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard)

[3] [http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

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simplegeek
My dad. He came from a small background with lots of brothers and sisters. He
got to university and earned a degree in EE (only engineer in his town at that
point). Supported his family and did whatever he could for his family. He
never showed me any weakness even when his own father died. He has led a very
disciplined and amazing life. I just wish I could do/achieve 1/10th of his
life.

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anatoly
Cosma Shalizi
([http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/](http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/)),
ever since I discovered this link some 16 years ago:
[http://bactra.org/notebooks/](http://bactra.org/notebooks/)

~~~
bglazer
Can't recommend these notebooks enough. They cover an incredible variety of
statistics, physics, and other topics. They're lucidly written and well cited.
He's definitely an inspiration to keep reading and understanding.

------
liquidmetal
John Carmack. He's consistently at the edge of technology - whether it is game
engines or avionics. His insights are excellent and can often be used in other
areas of engineering / software development.

~~~
nerdy
He's a great speaker too, he'll discuss topics I am not at all familiar with
but the context he wraps them in makes them easy to intuit. He also has a very
intense passion for his work and his ability to dissect problems into their
primitives leads him to really elegant solutions (0x5f3759df! [1]).

If it weren't for John I would have absolutely no interest in VR... but with
his involvement it's hard to not be at least a _little_ curious.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root)

~~~
nerdy
I didn't say he developed it. He used it 3-4 years before it became widely
known and was responsible at least in part for its proliferation.

Finding your way to an elegant solution does not mean you created that
solution. In 1999, Google had 8 employees. Not every algorithm was available
at his fingertips. He had to care, seek, and find that solution to use it back
then, which might not seem like much now. That's a manifestation of his caring
about his craft; not inventing an algorithm.

------
zhte415
I've come to realize Jean Luc Picard is. Not exclusively, but when coming to
my approach managing people, he simply oozes through. Patrick Stewart more
broadly, a greatly insightful person.

But again, not exclusively; I am not a huge Star Trek fan, yet am a huge fan,
nor am I into the idea of replicating someone else, as you are you and not
them. Perhaps it was formative years, watching the show as a young teenager,
that left a seed there.

I find case studies and examples of situations are key. If you've not heard of
it, and are managing people, I also hugely recommend a resource in our
century: [http://manager-tools.com](http://manager-tools.com) a lot of good
applicable examples to a wide range of potential people problems and
opportunities there.

~~~
nextw33k
I assume you are referring to the management book I still own:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-So-Leadership-Lessons-
Generatio...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-So-Leadership-Lessons-
Generation-x/dp/0671520989)

~~~
zhte415
Thanks, that's amazing. I'd never really shared the above before, and had no
idea this book existed. I'm buying it now!

------
craftsman
I greatly admire Donald Knuth. He's humble, dedicated to his work in a healthy
way, and has fascinating outside interests in organ music, for example.

Most of all, I see in him the playful attitude about computer science that
Alan Perlis referred to: "I think that it's extraordinarily important that we
in computer science keep fun in computing."

------
scrabble
I'd say my father is my role model, as hokey as that sounds. He's an
intelligent man and has spent most of his life driving a truck. But, that's
what he wants to be doing. I'd like to ensure that I spend my life doing what
I want to do.

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tehcodez
Rich Hickey. He's brilliant and is arguably the best deeply technical speaker
I have ever seen/heard.

~~~
notduncansmith
Came here to say Rich. I attribute a large percentage of my programming skill
solely to his talks.

Honorable mentions:

\- Nathan Stott (worked with me early in my career and taught me to love
Javascript)

\- Michael Lopp (aka Rands in Repose)

\- Gary Bernhardt

\- José Valim

\- Joe Armstrong

\- Yehuda Katz

\- My dad (who taught me patience and the value of hard work)

\- Harvey Specter

\- Thomas Ptacek (whose consulting wisdom I cannot appreciate enough)

------
swah
Jesus Christ is the only one that won't disappoint me. All the other great
people I'll freely take the good parts and forget their mistakes.

~~~
oonny
true dat - double true

------
rayalez
There are several people who are very inspiring and important to me.

\- Paul Graham and Eliezer Yudkowsky

The 2 most clever people that I am aware of. I admire the way they write and
think, and want to learn to do that as well.

\- Owen Cook(Tyler) from RSD

This is the perfect model of a man that I wish to be. Driven, charismatic,
intelligent, just generally awesome. This is how I want to behave and be like.

\- Louis CK, Dan Harmon(creator of the shows Community and Rick and Morty) and
Randall Munroe(the author of xkcd)

I have enormous respect and love for comedy, just something about the way
comedians think is incredibly attractive to me. It takes a lot to be as
brilliantly creative as these guys, and I want to learn to think like that.

Others:

Richard Feynman, Kevin Mitnick, Frank Abagnale, Richard Branson - based on
their autobiographies, these guys lived cool lives.

Elon Musk - I don't know what kind of person he is, but based on what he does
- he is as cool as it gets.

Fictional:

\- Walter White, Gregory House

Brilliant person willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, not
giving up in desperate situations, acting rationally despite the emotions.

\- Barney Stinson

Haha this dude is awesome.

\- Hank Rearden

Basically a definition of a badass person, created to be the role model for
people like me.

\- Harry from HPMOR

Not much to explain here, he is also basically a definition of a cool person.

Others: Harvey Specter, Frank Underwood, Ari Gold, Hank Moody. And Tony Stark
I guess =)

~~~
0xndc
You might be interested in su3su2u1's teardowns of HPMOR [1] or at least his
review of the finished story [2]. The main takeaway is that MOR!Harry does
not, in fact, employ any "Methods of Rationality", usually leaping to
"obvious" conclusions without any experimental evidence whatsoever. The author
then opts to make the fictional universe fit these conclusions instead of the
other way around. Not only that, but most of the science/rationality
references are either wrong, incomplete or not applicable to the situation. So
despite having entertained me most of the time, HPMOR is not what I would call
a praiseworthy piece of writing.

[1] [http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/tagged/Hariezer-
Yudotter/chrono](http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/tagged/Hariezer-Yudotter/chrono)
[2] [http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/113649628443/hpmor-full-
revi...](http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/113649628443/hpmor-full-review-draft)

------
crystalclear506
Definitely Elon Musk, he's a real engineer and we both share the same
interests, aviation and electric vehicles

~~~
nerdy
Elon Musk is a freaking alien.

His list of accomplishments is ridiculous-- Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla and those
yet-to-be-realized like hyperloop. He's not a role model he's someone to be
downright jealous about! (Sarcasm!)

Seriously though to be involved in that many successful ventures it has to be
more than just luck.

~~~
huherto
I actually like to think that he is an alien lost on earth trying to build a
spaceship to go back home. With Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX, he is just
bootstrapping what he needs to build to go back home.

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RefactoringDao
Alan Watts taught me to flow and see,

Elon Musk taught me to grow and be,

Ayn Rand then helped break the self-illusions, (Ironically!)

Will Durant showed the path to break many delusions.

~~~
pmdulaney
Makes me feel like I'm in the Santa Cruz mountains, under some redwoods,
listening to a creek gurgle by. Nice imagery, man.

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decasteve
Buckminster Fuller. The epitome of an "outside-the-box" thinker--regardless of
how cliché that is nowadays. Reading what he wrote and listening to his talks
changed my world-view. He also changed the way I view/approach/solve problems
in my day-to-day work.

He's also a quotation goldmine:

“make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time,
through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the
disadvantage of anyone.”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller)

------
Stephn_R
Chris Coyier

I enamored the man for his work and his experience with developing truly
innovative work while still pursuing an active "side project" go-getter-ness
via Codepen. But after seeing his appearance on Envato's "Made By" series, I
could not have chosen a better role model. He is exactly what I want to be in
the future. Calm and Collected and revered as an expert in my field.

Here is the video for those who are interested:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRmbVOI6oIM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRmbVOI6oIM)

------
christianbryant
Linus Torvalds [0]

Richard Stallman [1]

Linus for Linux; I'd be lost without that kernel.

Richard for GNU; I'd be lost without GNU GCC and Emacs.

Both of them for looking at technology and wanting more, and not being
satisfied with the culture that existed at the time.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman)

------
cjfont
John Muir, for teaching people how to appreciate and preserve the few precious
natural wonders we have left, and how to discover our own spirituality within
them.

------
carrotleads
Joel Spolsky and I haven't even read most of his writings. Whatever I have
read have appealed to me. Plus he seems like a cool dude.

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nhayden
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is pretty cool. I like his transparency. He writes
really useful things. His writing about salary negotiation is probably the
single most useful thing I've ever read. Lots of other stuff he's covered I
hope will be relevant to me in the coming years (B2B sales).

------
collyw
Superhans from Peep Show.

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egeozcan
I have a huge admiration for people who, with a strong character, pushed the
boundaries of their time and invented revolutionary things while no one
believed in them and _even when some tried to hamper their research_. This may
apply to most inventors and explorers but for me, personally, Galileo Galilei
and Alan Turing stand out.

If a "role-model" means what I understand it is (Person who had a role in
society that you dream of having), then yes, they are my role-models.

------
amykhar
Grace Hopper - I love her personality and admire her career.

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swalsh
Leonardo da Vinci - An independent self learner who was accomplished in art
and engineering. I'd say Renaissance Men in general are pretty high up on my
list of admiration. I like the idea of not focusing on one discipline,
learning as many ideas and specialties as I can, then combining them in new
ways. To always be curious.

------
HelloThereHuman
George Costanza

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trequartista
From a software development perspective - Brad Fitzpatrick

From a business perspective - Elon Musk

From a humanities perspective - Gandhi

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srinivas1990
I admire so many great people but I never forced my self to be like them , I
am going in my own way

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nextw33k
Napoleon Hill.

If you look past the mantras you'll see a psychology of selling and the need
for connections.

Everything you do is selling; the way you look, what you eat, how you
communicate and how you work, you are selling yourself to the world hoping to
get more back in return.

------
ThinkingGuy
Fred Rogers (aka Mister Rogers). I watched him on TV occasionally as a child,
but it wasn't until I was an adult, and started reading about him and watching
interviews with him, that I realized what an amazing person he was in real
life.

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jlas
Probably Bill Gates. He was the first person that struck me as wildly
successful (this was in the mid 90s). For some reason his success really
resonated with me and helped me realize, at an early age, the importance of
delayed gratification.

------
andersthue
I do not know if it counts as a role model, but I choose to let me inspire on
a regular basis by:

Seth Godin, Paul Graham, Swiss Miss, James Altuhcer, Rob Walling & Mike Taber
/ Startup For the Rest of us, Zen Founder

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vaibkv
My father who works for 18 hours a day and Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam - the Missile
Man and Former President of India. I recently met him.

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netcraft
for a long time I would say ive had a hard time answering that question, but
at the moment I think I would pick Casey Neistat. His motivation and
creativity is an inspiration for me.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat](https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat)

------
Bahamut
No role model.

I push myself to work as hard as I can and do right by other people. You don't
need a role model for that.

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talles
Rich Hickey teached me how to program. Alan Watts teached me how to live.

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meric
I tend to use the good parts of whoever happens to be right in front or right
next to me to build my role model.

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Varkiil
Bill, from The Bigdil

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JonCox
Richard Branson.

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bvrlt
Sheldon Cooper

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MichaelCrawford
Richard Feynman.

I knew him at Caltech. He tutored me in Quantum Mechanics.

A few things I learned from him: you cannot bullshit a good scientist. If you
can't explain it to an undergraduate you don't understand it yourself.
Experiment rules - if experiment says it's not true then it isn't, despite
what theory might say - and he was a theoretician!

Everyone who knew anything about him revered him as a god because he made it
plainly apparent he regarded it as more important to teach Physics than to
understand it himself. He must have come to that conclusion late in life, as I
recently learned that as a young Cornell professor he was quite irresponsible
towards his students.

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ExpiredLink
Wally.

