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Comment by riwsky

11 hours ago

#All possible codebases by major programmers

Linus Torvalds: you take a week-long swing at a problem you find annoying, fascinating, or both. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by some alternative from the GNU project that, pinky promise, is coming out any day now.

Grace Hopper: BEGIN a framework that powers critical government functions, AND has secretly saved America from mass destruction time and again, only to be dunked on by Reddit for trivial matters of syntax END.

John Carmack: Doom, but better-looking.

Brendan Eich: you take a week-long swing at a problem your employer finds commercially compelling. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by the prior art it was supposed to build on.

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riwsky

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ashton314  11 hours ago

Fabrice Bellard: A problem with several competing solutions catches your fancy. Within a week you have a gleaming, state-of-the-art solution that is flexible, reliable, and extensible—all written in pure, efficient C. Everyone begins to build on your work.

Donald Knuth: While writing your magnum opus, a minor irritation arises. You invent a new subfield of computing and spend two years developing a highly idiosyncratic language and tool system.\footnote{And several new typefaces!} Your irritation dissipates and you go back to work with your writing. Generations of academics curse your creation but have nothing better to work with. They wonder if they can get Fabrice Bellard to take a crack at it…

  • scruple  4 hours ago

    > Fabrice Bellard

    Working on (a medium-sized team that is working on) an LTE base station in the late 2000s and then I'm introduced to his work. It was a very humbling experience. Over the decades I've met a handful of people who were, at times, within reach of Fabrice but he is truly in a league of his own.

mp05  11 hours ago

> Brendan Eich: you take a week-long swing at a problem your employer finds commercially compelling. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by the prior art it was supposed to build on.

Pretty brilliant, right? Right?

  • grotorea  10 hours ago

    I would like to quote the creator of Dogecoin:

    > In reply to that, Mr Markus was asked whether he had considered energy usage when creating the cryptocurrency.

    > “i made doge in like 2 hours i didn’t consider anything,” he wrote.

    • akoboldfrying  7 hours ago

      I love this so much. It's like "The Emperor's New Clothes", except it's the Emperor himself yelling "I'm naked you fucking idiots!"