

Interview with the man who built Google's V8 engine from scratch - arihelgason
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html

======
smanek
I thought this was kind of funny:

 _What does annoy him is people misunderstanding his work - or "the
technology", as he puts it. One example he gives is an article about him in
which the journalist confuses Java and JavaScript (the former is a stand-alone
program which can be accessed online, the latter is a browser-dependent
scripting language)_

I'd say that distinction between Java and Javascript is pretty wrong too ...

~~~
benhoyt
That is funny. "Browser-dependent scripting language" isn't _too_ bad for
JavaScript. But "stand-alone program" for Java? That's kind of like calling
English a "stand-alone dictionary".

Sure, I'm a programmer. But why is it so easy for a journalist to get a
definition this wrong? Wikipedia immediately tells one that "Java is a
programming language" --
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)>

~~~
tlrobinson
Nit pick: JavaScript certainly isn't browser dependent, that just happens to
be where it originated and the vast majority of usage takes place.

------
plinkplonk
Key Takeaway : If you are _really really good_ at what you do, companies will
pay you to work out of home, writing Open Source code, from scratch, at your
own pace, on your own terms.

For the rest of us there is always enterprise systems and cube farms. :-(.
Yeah Ok I am just depressed at how much other programmers are better than me
:-(

More seriously though, I wouldn't have thought that there is such a "market"
for expertise in writing VM s. Of course you probably get to be that good by
not caring how much of a "market" there is to doing the things you love.

"Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough,
you'll make it prestigious. " - PG in his essay "How to Do What You Love"

~~~
patio11
_I am just depressed at how much other programmers are better than me_

Learn a differentiating skill or two and suddenly you're the best programmer
_in the niche_. Human languages, domain expertise, business/soft skills, etc
etc. (I am no great shakes as a programmer but, if I actually cared to be
"gainfully employed" for the duration of my career, being bilingual in
Japanese/English and capable of programming my way out of a paper bag would
pretty much guarantee it.)

~~~
kirubakaran
On a similar note:

 _If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just
stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if
you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1\. Become the best at one specific thing.

2\. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people
will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone
even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which
they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better
than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the
average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most
people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the
combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my
business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to
understand without living it._

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-
advice.html)

~~~
Hexstream
I don't know... if one is great at, say, 3D programming, VM implementation and
parsing theory is that being great at 3 things or at 1 thing (a subset of
computing)?

~~~
nostrademons
3 things - it makes you expertly qualified to write a new programming language
for manipulation of 3D video streams...

------
atarashi
_Bak may be a computing genius, but he didn’t touch a computer until he was at
university._

Wow. I wonder how many 10x programmers got their start in college.

~~~
fleaflicker
Would be an interesting poll for HN. I'm in that same boat, I bet a lot of the
readers here are too.

~~~
christofd
Yeah, computers in high school were only for nerds. Nobody wants to hang with
the calculator crowd. Later on that changed.

------
hboon
And OOVM was the company that produced an embedded Smalltalk that was used in
systems like speakers and stuff. I had always thought that's a pretty cool
piece of work.

[Lars] Bak - "If you have say, a small router or a dishwasher you can upgrade
the code while it's running, no reboot is required"
(<http://www.smalltalk.org/versions/OOVM.html>)

------
andreyf
Next time, please point to print version:
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=a712eb94-dc2b-11da-890d-0000779e2340,print=yes.html)

------
amix
There's a question in the article if he has spent more than 10.000 hours - - I
think he has. First, he holds a masters in CS (5 years at Aarhus Uni at
minimum). He got his MSc in 1988 and has worked with VM's since then - that's
21 years of experience in implementing VM's. So really, there isn't an easy
way to become really, really good at something ;-)

~~~
whacked_new
The 10k figure is a nice rule of thumb, but it's not very informative if
you're counting them. "10 years to an expert" is also a good rule of thumb
(which comes to 10k hours, for 3 hours a day), but it's also uninformative to
count years.

For the average person who diligently hacks away, 10 years seems about right.
But some people are ferociously quick at improving and that's just how they
are.

------
MikeCapone
"Companies don’t really make money out of web browsers – the Explorers,
Safaris and Firefoxes of the internet. So why is a new one so important to
Google? Why invest time and effort in a free product that generates no income
for the company behind it?""

That sounds false to me. AFAIK, Firefox makes a lot of money for Mozilla via
the search field (via adsense), and other browsers certainly do the same.

~~~
eru
How does Opera make money? Paid by Google?

~~~
hboon
That (search engines) and licensing their _mobile_ browser among a few ways.

------
shimi
I liked the part about long hours, in my experience the long hours crowed are
only wasting time.

You come to work, you code, you leave that's as simple as that!

~~~
cake
Me too, I certainly appreciate the work/life balance this guy is talking
about. That's the kind of spirit I'm following and I'm glad some people aren't
emphasizing the developer's myth of all nighters.

------
c00p3r
There is another less known but worth to mention project. There is a man, who
wrote highly optimized (literally - he had counted every system call, every
buffer) web server with proxy functionality - <http://nginx.net/>

It is another example how one fanatical (and a little paranoid, of course)
person could change the world. It is a brilliant work! If you will take a look
at its source code - it is like poetry to those who understands.

This server is being used mostly on extremely high loaded adult or dating
sites around the world.

It is also good example of how to do optimizations in general - modify a
weakest (a slowest) component, test and measure, change the next one.

------
asdlfj2sd
_What does annoy him is people misunderstanding his work – or “the
technology”, as he puts it. One example he gives is an article about him in
which the journalist confuses Java and JavaScript (the former is a stand-alone
program which can be accessed online, the latter is a browser-dependent
scripting language). We both laugh at the mistake, and for a moment I feel
like Bak and I have clicked._

Is technology _that_ hard, or are journalists _that_ lazy? both?

