
Jon Skeet: The 'Chuck Norris' of Programming - damian2000
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-34596634
======
bad_user
I respect Jon Skeet very much and it's by his book that I learned C# when I
needed. I do feel that we tend to treat people we admire as gods, this being
detrimental to the learning process. Especially in a global market without
boundaries, like the software industry, it's easy to compare oneself with the
best of us and this ends up being quite depressing. We shouldn't forget that
such people are humans as well, continuously learning, improving and prone to
do mistakes like the rest of us. Here is an example:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1426754/linkedblockingque...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1426754/linkedblockingqueue-
vs-concurrentlinkedqueue/24439878)

~~~
rjzzleep
The biggest issue with idolizing people this much in my opinion is that it
puts a huge divide between you and that idol.

People have heroes, and heroes do things normal humans can't. That further
translates into other parts of life where really terrible things are done by
villains and the only ones being able to counter it are those heroes we
created.

I don't understand why people fetishize names that much. It's almost as if
they are subconsciously saying:

"Given that xyz is so much better than I and he's a genius, I can therefore
never hope to reach that goal, so there's no point in trying"

While at the same time consciously saying: "I wish I could be like him"

As the germans say: "Keine Bange, der kocht auch nur mit Wasser"

There's a whole bunch of inventions we accredit to different people than
actually did them and we praise them like gods. And there is no rational
behind that behavior. Yes, it's still a great achievement, but no it doesn't
matter as much as we like to pretend.

On a step further we get to the discussion of what success is. Is success when
everyone knows you? Is it when you have a lot of money? If it's all about the
money, no european startup will ever be as great as its american counterpart.
There's just not as much money.

~~~
jonskeet
> The biggest issue with idolizing people this much in my opinion is that it
> puts a huge divide between you and that idol.

If it's any help, I'd be happy to give a huge list of bugs I've caused due to
inexperience and incompetence.

I'm not going to pretend I don't enjoy the micro-celebrity status SO has given
me, but I'd be happy to help correct any impression that there's a huge gulf
between me and any "regular" programmer. Maybe a gulf in "time spent answering
questions on SO" but not some massive intellectual divide.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Honestly, I was expecting a list of projects that you delivered with great
code quality, tools you built to improve programming, and so on. I have that
for Margaret Hamilton, from Apollo to 001. Bernstein of Qmail and Rod Chapman
of Praxis Correct-by-Construction come to mind. Answering lots of questions
about programming indicates _something_ about knowledge but that depends on
the questions & answers. I know lots of programmers value people doing hands-
on parts.

So, all in all, I guess I'm wondering what writings or work you did that puts
you on list of top programmers. I mean, is it just how many aspiring or
professional programmers you've helped day to day? The amplification effect of
your SO activities on our field? Or specific, jaw-dropping software or books I
don't know about? Or both?

Just curious.

~~~
jonskeet
Well, my C# book (C# in Depth) has been well received. I'd like to think my
date/time library for .NET (Noda Time) is mostly well-written.

But no, nothing that I'd expect to put me in the top 15 (or top 1500)
programmers in the world.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That's honest. Appreciate the feedback. In case you missed the other comment,
I do think we should have recognition of contribution to _educating_
programmers in practical ways. I think your StackOverflow work and book should
earn you some place high on that list. :)

------
bpires
I thought Jeff Dean was the 'Chuck Norris' of programming. He designed (with
others) a lot of Google's biggest infrastructure projects as well as multiple
iterations of the main search infrastructure.

Among others, the projects he's worked on include:

Spanner - a scalable, multi-version, globally distributed, and synchronously
replicated database

Some of the production system design and statistical machine translation
system for Google Translate.

BigTable, a large-scale semi-structured storage system.

MapReduce a system for large-scale data processing applications.

Google Brain a system for large-scale artificial neural networks

LevelDB an open source on-disk key-value store.

TensorFlow an open source machine learning software library.

See [http://www.wired.com/2012/08/google-as-xerox-
parc/all/](http://www.wired.com/2012/08/google-as-xerox-parc/all/)

[https://www.quora.com/Who-is-Jeff-Dean](https://www.quora.com/Who-is-Jeff-
Dean)

~~~
Keiso
If Jeff Dean built Google, Jon Skeet is my Google. Atleast until Google is
able to tell me where my program is supposed to store local files on the
twenty different versions of Windows.

~~~
Mafana0
I have a big respect for Jon Skeet, but to dismiss Jeff Dean's work because
Skeet is the one who provides copy-and-paste snippets for programmers is wrong
on so many levels.

------
tgamblin
The common complaint about stackoverflow reputation is that it's a function of
the number of questions answered and not actual skill.
[http://stackrating.com/](http://stackrating.com/) gives an Elo rating of
stackoverflow users, where you're rated by how well you answer relative to
others (sort of like a ladder).

Jon Skeet is #2 on the Elo scale, so not only is he answering a lot of
questions; his answers get upvoted more than others. He really _is_ giving
good answers, in addition to being quite prolific. Eric Lippert might be the
more interesting data point, though -- despite being 23rd in reputation, he's
#1 on the Elo scale.

~~~
mark-r
Thanks for the link to the Elo scale. Kind of depressing though when I looked
myself up, I'm much lower there than I am on SO's rank.

~~~
jkubicek
I'm suspicious of the Elo scale, at least used to rank folks who aren't near
the top of the reputation scales. I'm ranked 2600th for reputation, but 3.5
millionth for rating. I'm not surprised that other people are doing a better
job of answering questions than me, but to say that I'm in the bottom 5% of
users is highly suspect. I'm active in reviewing other users's flagged
questions, I've seen what the bottom of the barrel looks like and my answers
are certainly not it.

~~~
mattmanser
Not only that, but you've made 400 answers compared to my 125 answers but have
almost 7x the SO score and yet I'm rated 12,975th compared to your
3,575,349th.

Definitely not right.

------
s_dev
This is my favourite Jon Skeet Answer:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-
subtractin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtracting-
these-two-times-in-1927-giving-a-strange-result)

It's not because he gives a wonderfully description of the problem and
solution that makes you fully understand what happened. What makes it
incredible It's that he solved it so comprehensively in 15 minutes from the
time the poster asked the question. Most high calibre devs would be still
wrapping their head around the problem after 15 minutes.

~~~
jonskeet
> Most high calibre devs would be still wrapping their head around the problem
> after 15 minutes. reply

Most high calibre devs haven't stumbled into doing a lot of date/time work.
That wasn't some clever decision on my part - it was working on the calendar
part of Google Mobile Sync. Date and time is a rabbit hole that I just went
deep on. A bit of luck rather than spectacular wide knowledge, I'm afraid.

I love that question and answer too, although I doubt that it's genuinely
_helped_ many people. Time zone and calendar stuff has a _lot_ of amusing
trivia. My favourite involves the 30th of February, which only occurred in
1712, and only in Sweden.

~~~
dboreham
Having done some time in the trenches with calendar code, I would like the
politicians and bureaucrats who define the rules to have some notion of the
cost they inflict. Then perhaps we wouldn't have "let's change the DST dates
this year (only) as an experiment" and we certainly wouldn't have leap
seconds..

~~~
jakub_g
Politicians couldn't care less about the leap seconds IMO. It's the other
geeks (non-programmers) who enforce its existence. In fact the leap seconds
predate the modern computing era. I guess they didn't have such a big impact
in 1970s. In fact I didn't learn about them until 2012 when many systems
crashed after leap second.

Having said that, politicians changing DST rules with a few weeks notice (like
Turkey last autumn) are nuts. The impact of such decisions is huge and
worldwide (emergency patches etc.)

~~~
dboreham
Politicians of some sort are in charge of whether leap seconds exist or not.
afaik it is mostly a particular kind of religion (belief that human time must
be in all ways bound to the heavens) that drove the political push for leap
seconds. Like you I only discovered they existed when my kernels locked up..

------
lordnacho
I've personally had questions answered by skeet.

It's totally unbelievable how quickly he understands the question and types
out an explanation with code.

It actually boggles the mind how he can have a job and answer questions all
day.

Here's an example

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3489197/is-there-a-
shorth...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3489197/is-there-a-shorthand-
for-form-begininvoke)

~~~
wsc981
A while ago I thought his account was used by several people, since he seemed
to answer questions all day, during day and night - I checked his statistics
at the time. It surprised me to learn it's all done by a single person.

------
mjs
Amazingly there's things even the Chuck Norris of programming doesn't know:

[http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-
skeet?tab=questions](http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-
skeet?tab=questions)

He's only asked 39 questions (about one for every 1000 answers), but I'm
charmed by the fact that they're real questions, usually not particularly
esoteric or "advanced". Turns out even Jon Skeet needs to ask how to
"efficiently fetch a Mercurial change log in TeamCity."

~~~
fulafel
Interestingly all the ones I clicked on had been tagged as inaproppriate
questions by the moderators.

~~~
ChrisDutrow
This is just a guess: A lot of those are old questions. They might have been
tagged as inappropriate a long time after they were posted as policies
evolved.

That being said, if you ask a lot of questions on Stack Overflow, people
aren't going to like some of them. It's the cost of putting yourself out
there.

------
nxzero
Seeing someone as the beginning and more importantly end of a given topic is
dangerous, but so is the lack of inspiration and aspiration.

Jon's never claimed to be something he's not, he's contributed a massive
amount of value by being such a major earlier contributor to a system that's
grown to help millions of people daily. Nothing is perfect, but not aspiring
to inspire for fear of being seen as something you're not will never help
anyone.

Jon is awesome.

------
jnordwick
While he sounds really intelligent, SO points are a really bad way of
determining that. And the artical the story mentions is mostly about fame and
publicity, not the best. I've had the pleasure to work with and know a few
developers that should have be up there, but they work on commercial projects.

SO can be very swayed by names and becomes cliquish. There are a few ppl that
have massive points that have questioned SO's methodology and scoring.

Sounds like an interesting guy, but the story seems really flawed.

~~~
kayoone
It's more about being popular than being the best programmer in the world. He
has answered thousands of questions with insane accuracy since 2008, making
him one of the most popular names in the C#/Java world. Also he is very aware
of it and is even quoted in the article saying that there are "far, far better
programmers than me".

~~~
jnordwick
Looking over his answers, his breadth of knowledge definite impressed me. I
don't know too many people that can discuss the intricacies of how
architecture affects performance, then turn around and talk about enterprise
platforms.

He also seems like a nice guy.

It makes me wish the article was better more than anything.

------
Scirra_Tom
Jon Skeet answered several questions I had when learning c#, he's been an
inspiration to me and extremely helpful on my journey!

His "C# In Depth" book is fantastic as well.

------
ruffrey
It is deeply satisfying to see Jon Skeet in the mainstream.

------
baus
"All his Stack Overflow work is unpaid, done purely to help millions of people
around the world he will never meet."

Atwood did an amazing job gamifying Stack Overflow, but I think it is worth
considering that while the contributors gain little from the site financially,
that was not the case for the founders.

~~~
inglor
Jon Published a book, I know at least 3 people (me included) who have
purchased the book because of interacting with him through the site.

It's not fair to say he didn't benefit from StackOverflow and his revenue is
linked to his contribution and the success of the site.

Note that there are at least 100 people with over 100K reputation in
StackOverflow. Also note, it's completely fine to do something as a hobby
without looking for profit - and it's fine to grow side profit through it.

I got lots of employment offers through StackOverflow for example.

~~~
coldtea
Books usually lose you money.

Programming books doubly so, especially if your hour rate is that of a Google
programmer, it's hardly worth spending half a year or even a year for the
measly returns.

~~~
dionidium
That book is doing a lot more for Jon Skeet than putting royalties in his
pocket

~~~
coldtea
Well, it's haven't "upgraded" his job -- he still works the same job at
Google.

The fame from being "Chuck Norris" of SO is more than enough, and more
impressive that having written a programming book anyway (with tons of people
have done).

~~~
dionidium
Tons of people have written a programming book, but Skeet wrote a _good_ one.

------
riebschlager
I heard that when Jon Skeet divides by zero, instead of throwing an exception
he gets thrown a thumbs up. Out of respect.

I also heard that Jon Skeet can't run Array.pop() because the entire array
collapses out of sheer terror.

Did you know that Jon Skeet can fix any memory leak just pointing at the
computer and saying, "No."

------
stevenalowe
The 'Chuck Norris' reference comes from this long-but-amusing meta thread:
[http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-
facts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts)

------
bitwize
I would have nominated Fabrice Bellard or Oleg Kiselyov as the Chuck Norris of
programming.

~~~
sllabres
He is on the list (11)

------
JustSomeNobody
More like the Abrash of .net.

------
jcoffland
I think it's a win for all programmers that one of us is being idolized like a
basketball player.

------
bl4ckdu5t
I just haven't stumbled upon a lot of posts answered by Jon Skeet even though
I've always heard of him as the Chuck Norris of programming through SO. Is
that because I'm not a C# developer?

------
ape4
I'd like to see him on the QI tv show.

------
pgbovine
hmmm, I thought Jeff Dean was the Chuck Norris of programming:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/astounding-facts-about-
google...](http://www.businessinsider.com/astounding-facts-about-googles-most-
badass-engineer-jeff-dean-2012-1)

------
coldcode
Given Norris's political views I'm not sure that comparison is a something I
would want.

~~~
DonHopkins
I agree, and find it downright creepy, cowardly and disappointing how many
people would downvote you for disagreeing with Norris's right-wing [1] anti-
gay [2] political views [3], without saying why they agreed with Chuck Norris.

How about Chuck Norris's brave brogrammer fans reply under their own name
telling us what they like so much about his political views, instead of
downvoting anonymously? Because if you have some anti-gay bigotry you want to
spread, at least put your name on it, since that's what Chuck Norris would do.
[4]

[1] [http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/chuck-
norris](http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/chuck-norris)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/27/chuck-norris-
an...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/27/chuck-norris-anti-gay-
scouts)

[3] [http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/articles/5-reasons-its-no-
lon...](http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/articles/5-reasons-its-no-longer-cool-
chuck-norris)

[4] [http://www.newnownext.com/chuck-norris-hired-by-anti-gay-
gro...](http://www.newnownext.com/chuck-norris-hired-by-anti-gay-group-
marriage-sacred-union-between-man-and-woman/12/2014/)

~~~
codingdave
This is a site about technology, not politics. I downvoted the original
comment because it is not a good match for the topic or tone of Hacker News. I
downvoted your comment because your tone is even more aggressive and
antagonizing, and again, not on topic.

------
azzafazza
How is this top of HN with only 60 points and 10 comments?

~~~
ant6n
Sunday

------
infodroid
Just how meaningful are these "reputation points" that make this guy number
one?

If Visual Basic was the language with the most number of beginners and
programmers, and I had the best answers to Visual Basic questions, I could be
Chuck Norris instead.

But I don't find Visual Basic challenging or interesting. Neither C# or Java
for that matter.

~~~
jonskeet
They're not meaningful at all. Hopefully relatively few people _really_ think
I'm one of the "top 15 living programmers" or anything like that.

I'm good enough to make a living, and good enough to help people on SO. One of
the nice things about programming is that what you find interesting, I might
not and vice versa - hopefully there will always be enough people who find a
variety of topics interesting to hope those who have problems in those topics.
But yes, considering rep as a proxy metric for programming awesomeness would
be a mistake IMO.

~~~
infodroid
In case it needs stating, your contributions to the programming community are
simply remarkable. And it is only right that your efforts should be better
appreciated by the tech community and wider society.

But there are numerous unsung heroes who, for whatever reason, do not get the
recognition they deserve.

Like those on Stack Overflow who are investing the same amount of time and
effort as some of the top rep contributors, but in areas that are not as
reputationally rewarding.

But there is also a large group that are not posting on Stack Overflow, who
are more likely to be working somewhere across the thousands of forums, git
repos and mailing lists that developers inhabit. Out of the limelight, and
with no reputation points to show for it.

------
beyti
I guess being "bbc" is the only thing that made this post first page.

~~~
theoh
I don't know about that but I can report that Skeet went to Cambridge
University, which tends to produce a chunk of the UK's governing elite.

The unfortunate thing is that in the UK, as elsewhere, programmers and
technical people are generally regarded as socially inept boffins who don't
quite "get" the way society works. Recognition of this goes back to C.P.
Snow's Two Cultures from the 50s.

So being hailed by the BBC as the world's greatest programmer is a mixed
honour. It comes with an implicit dose of condescension.

~~~
noir_lord
You need a chip for the other shoulder otherwise you are going to become
really unbalanced.

~~~
coldtea
What exactly seemed like he has a "chip on his shoulder" for you?

