It's a bit of a shame that the world at large doesn't get to see his code in NT. It is by far the most gorgeous C code I've seen. In fact, in the beginning, there have been times when I used to look up his code just to feel inspired (think of it as 'code inspiration').
Getting to meet him and work in the same team as him for the last few years has definitely been the highlight of my Microsoft career.
Also, my wife (HN username:arithmetic) will tell you that getting a autographed copy of Showstopper was one of the best gifts I've gotten her :)
Cutler is definitely under appreciated, but I agree he is a one man army in terms of what he has created.
I say under appreciated, because he seems like a rather quiet figure who does not do a lot of showboating or seek attention and because of those things he tends to be forgotten.
Also, is he not the lead developer on the Windows Azure Platform?
And that is not the whole of his career. If I am not mistaken, NT is the third os in which he has been the head dude: RSX-11/m, and VMS being the other two.
I'm surprised to see Markus Alexej Persson (aka Notch) missing from that list for Minecraft. Between doing the coding and art, he's demonstrated that he can basically do it all.
Agree. Similarly for Tarn Adams (Dwarf Fortress) - I guess not so much the art in that case, but programming a cult hit like that by yourself is pretty impressive to me.
Really? Around the time of RollerCoaster Tycoon (and beforehand) games were written in Assembly language. I was writing games in assembly language back in the 80s and early 90s.
Certainly if you wrote games for the Atari ST, Amiga or any of the 8-bit platforms you would've written it in assembler. Compilers just weren't efficient enough at producing the fastest code possible at the time.
Also, I know some programmers who generally program best if just left alone to do their job, instead of trying to get the 'team' to decide everything. Left to their own devices, they end up with the 'right'* answer in much less time than if forced to argue design with a team and then work with a team to implement it.
I know others that work best in a team and definitely benefit from talking out the entire design beforehand, and then coding pieces of it together.
So yes, there's a very good chance that those programmers who think they work better alone actually do work better alone. It's probably experience talking, and not just hubris.
* (Yes, I know there's no 1 'right' answer. The answers they come up with are always as good as they get, though.)
I'm so surprised Fabrice Bellard is so far down. The guy is absolutely one of the greatest developers I've ever ever had the luxury of reviewing the code of.
By comparison, DJB is a force of nature when it comes to programming, but reading his code can be a little difficult (try understanding qmail's source base as an example). I have to admit though, _why's is the most readable of all truly great code, despite the fact that it's at least mostly in ruby.
Agreed, and if you're talking about an army, DJB is a wonderful example. Not only can he write iron code, but he can successfully sue the government when they try to restrict it, while representing himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
"Some of his most notable contributions were the vi editor, NFS, and csh. Joy's prowess as a computer programmer is legendary, with an oft-told anecdote that he wrote the vi editor in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion.[2] Joy's accomplishments have been sometimes exaggerated; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell at the time, inaccurately reported during an interview in PBS's documentary Nerds 2.0.1 that Joy had personally rewritten the BSD kernel in a weekend."
"Joy was also a primary figure in the development of the SPARC microprocessors, the Java programming language, Jini / JavaSpaces and JXTA."
"BBN had a big contract to implement TCP/IP, but their stuff didn't work, and Joy's grad student stuff worked. So they had this big meeting and this grad student in a T-shirt shows up, and they said, "How did you do this?" And Bill said, "It's very simple — you read the protocol and write the code."
> "How did you do this?" And Bill said, "It's very simple — you read the protocol and write the code."
Love it. Reminds me of the Feynman Algorithm mentioned here on HN a few days ago. Regarding how Feynman came up with so much brilliant, groundbreaking work, that the steps he supposedly followed were:
I posted it on the page but one guy some here might like:
L. Peter Deutsch for writing the PDP-1 version of Lisp at the age 12 (he was the son of an MIT prof and was hanging out with MIT Hackers back in the 60s) he also wrote Ghostscript
Yes. James Clark's most impressive work was nsgmls, which was a correct and comprehensive SGML parser (one of the few that ever existed). The annotated SGML standard was 688 pages long, and it was still missing huge amounts of critical information.
I know some truly amazing Lisp hackers—some of the most productive programmers I've ever met—who considered nsgmls an amazingly and slightly disturbing feat.
I'm sad to see that there's not been any mention of Geoff Crammond (Revs, The Sentinel, Stunt Car Racer, Formula One Grand Prix). He was singled out even 'back in the day' for being the ultimate one-man army when it came to game development.
[+] [-] sriramk|15 years ago|reply
It's a bit of a shame that the world at large doesn't get to see his code in NT. It is by far the most gorgeous C code I've seen. In fact, in the beginning, there have been times when I used to look up his code just to feel inspired (think of it as 'code inspiration').
Getting to meet him and work in the same team as him for the last few years has definitely been the highlight of my Microsoft career.
Also, my wife (HN username:arithmetic) will tell you that getting a autographed copy of Showstopper was one of the best gifts I've gotten her :)
[+] [-] meddlepal|15 years ago|reply
I say under appreciated, because he seems like a rather quiet figure who does not do a lot of showboating or seek attention and because of those things he tends to be forgotten.
Also, is he not the lead developer on the Windows Azure Platform?
[+] [-] wglb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chops|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cruise02|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archangel_one|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olalonde|15 years ago|reply
That is quite humbling to say the least.
[+] [-] _b8r0|15 years ago|reply
Certainly if you wrote games for the Atari ST, Amiga or any of the 8-bit platforms you would've written it in assembler. Compilers just weren't efficient enough at producing the fastest code possible at the time.
[+] [-] ks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|15 years ago|reply
I know others that work best in a team and definitely benefit from talking out the entire design beforehand, and then coding pieces of it together.
So yes, there's a very good chance that those programmers who think they work better alone actually do work better alone. It's probably experience talking, and not just hubris.
* (Yes, I know there's no 1 'right' answer. The answers they come up with are always as good as they get, though.)
[+] [-] _b8r0|15 years ago|reply
By comparison, DJB is a force of nature when it comes to programming, but reading his code can be a little difficult (try understanding qmail's source base as an example). I have to admit though, _why's is the most readable of all truly great code, despite the fact that it's at least mostly in ruby.
[+] [-] mayank|15 years ago|reply
That, and teaching a course where the class uncovers 44 Unix security holes is quite impressive: http://it.slashdot.org/story/04/12/15/2113202/DJB-Announces-...
[+] [-] jeff18|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rxin|15 years ago|reply
From wikipedia:
"Some of his most notable contributions were the vi editor, NFS, and csh. Joy's prowess as a computer programmer is legendary, with an oft-told anecdote that he wrote the vi editor in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion.[2] Joy's accomplishments have been sometimes exaggerated; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell at the time, inaccurately reported during an interview in PBS's documentary Nerds 2.0.1 that Joy had personally rewritten the BSD kernel in a weekend."
"Joy was also a primary figure in the development of the SPARC microprocessors, the Java programming language, Jini / JavaSpaces and JXTA."
"BBN had a big contract to implement TCP/IP, but their stuff didn't work, and Joy's grad student stuff worked. So they had this big meeting and this grad student in a T-shirt shows up, and they said, "How did you do this?" And Bill said, "It's very simple — you read the protocol and write the code."
[+] [-] mkramlich|15 years ago|reply
Love it. Reminds me of the Feynman Algorithm mentioned here on HN a few days ago. Regarding how Feynman came up with so much brilliant, groundbreaking work, that the steps he supposedly followed were:
1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.
[+] [-] nkassis|15 years ago|reply
L. Peter Deutsch for writing the PDP-1 version of Lisp at the age 12 (he was the son of an MIT prof and was hanging out with MIT Hackers back in the 60s) he also wrote Ghostscript
[+] [-] dws|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codebaobab|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pom|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekidd|15 years ago|reply
I know some truly amazing Lisp hackers—some of the most productive programmers I've ever met—who considered nsgmls an amazingly and slightly disturbing feat.
[+] [-] l0nwlf|15 years ago|reply
Ishaan Chattopadhyaya IMO, not many outsiders know of him but he single-handedly rewrote MapQuest Search.
[+] [-] templaedhel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregsadetsky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yankcrime|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joakal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hopeless|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] JimmyRuska|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashutoshm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khingebjerg|15 years ago|reply