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booi | 2 months ago

If there were a software engineering hall of fame, I nominate Fabrice.

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lacedeconstruct|2 months ago

rare occasion where he gained a legendary status based purely on his work, I dont think I ever saw even a written interview with the guy

hn_throwaway_99|2 months ago

I think this is such an important point. I know all about Bellard's main works. I actually have no idea what he looks like, I've also never seen an interview with him, and I've never read about his specific philosophies when it comes to different software engineering topics. In a world of never-ending bloviations from "influencers" and "thought leaders" it's so awesome to see a real example of true excellence.

IlikeMadison|2 months ago

Bellard it the most genius programmer to ever exist, and the least known compared to other pseudo stars.

textlapse|2 months ago

His consistency and craftsmanship is amazing.

Being an engineer and coding at this stage/level is just remarkable- sadly this trade craft is missing in most (big?) companies as you get promoted away into oblivion.

wyldfire|2 months ago

There is! ACM grants several awards for scientists and more.

One such award is the Turing Award [1], given "for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

hn_throwaway_99|2 months ago

The Turing Award is given for breakthroughs in computer science, not for "most productive programmer of all time", and it wouldn't be appropriate for Ballard.

senbrow|2 months ago

Fabrice is certainly very skilled in CS, but his achievements are more in software implementation IMO.

AIUI the Turing award is primarily CS focused.

bArray|2 months ago

If there were some form of "developed contributions to computing" award, his name is definitely up there. I think there could be a need for such an award - for people who reliably have created the foundations of modern computing. Otherwise it's almost always things from an academic context, which can be a little too abstract.

sxp|2 months ago

Between ffmpeg and qemu, I always think of https://xkcd.com/2347/ when I see Fabrice's work. Especially since ffmpeg provides the backbone of almost all video streaming systems today.

makapuf|2 months ago

Except that ffmpeg and qemu are not maintained by Fabrice. He's one of the greatest programmers but he's not maintaining the internet.