
Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a Super-Productive Programmer (2011) - Baustin
http://blog.smartbear.com/careers/fabrice-bellard-portrait-of-a-super-productive-programmer/
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trcollinson
Disclaimer: I've read this article at least 10 times and I have never posted
it to Hacker News.

That being said, even though it is a repost (and should have the date added to
the title), with all of the "interesting" articles on HN about the latest
theories in start up-i-ness, like another company who shows everyone their
employees salaries by name, or once again how bad/good/awesome bitcoins are,
this is definitely worth another read. A lot can be learned about how to
succeed in technology by studying Bellard's methods:

\-- Incremental changes to under served problems

\-- Solid techniques that stand up to the test of time

\-- Great documentation

\-- Building communities around problem sets

\-- Knowing your strengths and sticking to them, only jumping when it makes
sense

The list goes on and on. Any person who wants to be successful in this
business would do well to take the 10 minutes it takes to read this post.

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swalsh
This repost is so old, it misses his new super productive achievement. An
implementation of LTE Base Station.
[http://bellard.org/lte/](http://bellard.org/lte/)

~~~
k3n
Also doesn't mention his JS-based linux:
[http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

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steeve
To think that pretty much all online video directly relies on his work
(FFmpeg) is pretty mind blowing.

~~~
swah
Why is that?

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adamwong246
Ok, show of hands: Having read this, who here suddenly feels really
insufficient?

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nly
I used to feel insufficient, now insufficient isn't a sufficient word to
describe how insufficient I actually feel.

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stiff
Would love to read a good interview with the guy, in the spirit of "Coders at
work", say, which was really good at this sort of thing. There are some nice
bits in this article, but in the end it's a bit like reading a CV.

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JeffJenkins
Impressive. I think these sorts of articles are hard to come by because many
(if not most) super productive programmers are doing their work for a company
where the outside world won't find out about what they have done. Fabrice is
notable because he's got a lot of high profile work.

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tekacs
Might anyone be able to comment on his employment in all these years?

Every time I've come across this article it's seemed to me that the work he's
done, whilst notable, is an entirely reasonable and very achievable _amount_
to have completed over the course of the at least 20 years that he has been
developing.

If he has held a full-time job that takes away the majority of his time or
something similar (as many here have) then I could understand these codebases
being particularly notably huge. Otherwise, as has been commented by others
here, this level of productivity, whilst admirable, seems to strike me as
similar to many, many programmers working around the world - in their cases
simply behind closed doors, instead and not working on their pet projects, but
on those chosen by their employers.

Thoughts?

~~~
swah
I have to disagree. Most programmers don't get to write something like ffmpeg
or qemu in their careers, regardless of the time invested. More likely, most
of us are writing the same amount of lines but in simpler, mundane projects,
with less impact in the whole ecosystem.

But to the layman, we can do magic, just like Bellard.

~~~
tekacs
I agree with you, but I think that the reason that so many don't get the
chance to work on projects such as these has less to do with proficiency or
'productivity' (in many, but _far from all_ cases) and more to do with
employment and the chance work on self-directed projects. Which is why I
wonder about his employment status during that time.

Whilst it could be argued that those employed in simpler programming for their
day-jobs could come home and work on these sorts of things in their spare
time, this of course neglects to take account of the difficulty of maintaining
such effort past the 5-8+ hours of concentration one typically puts in.

TL; DR: I think there are (have come across) a fair few frustrated programmers
out there who could build an achievement record like this if they could put in
Bellard's amount of time whilst being paid and otherwise supporting themselves
but are 'stuck' in jobs building much simpler, less interesting systems and
failing to dig themselves out.

As such, I'd like to know how Bellard has been supporting himself.

~~~
swah
Sure. Also, it seems he works or used to work for Netgem:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557422)

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jsvaughan
Um, again?

Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a Super-Productive Programmer
(blog.smartbear.com)

8 points by Baustin 1 hour ago | 0 comments | cached

Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a super-productive programmer (2011)
(blog.smartbear.com)

453 points by Baustin 10 months ago | 160 comments | cached

~~~
Baustin
Absolutely again. In both cases, people who had read this article commented
saying they were glad to see it and re-read it. This is one of two posts that
I would be fine re-posting year after year.

~~~
kej
I'll bite; what's the other one?

~~~
chris_mahan
"How software companies die" by Orson Scott Card?

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PaulHoule
Why does this keep getting reposted again and again and again and again?

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pawn
I've not seen it before. There are others who haven't either. If it's getting
re-posted and staying visible, that means enough people think it's interesting
to not fall into obscurity.

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adnam
R-R-R-R-Repost!
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=bellar...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=bellard)

