May 17, 2011 at 19:37Fabrice Bellar: portrait of an over-productive programmer
As in the computer industry there are ordinary PCs and supercomputers, some giants with superpower stand out among the developers. What else can you call a person whose list of projects looks like this:
1989: LZEXE
1996: Harissa
1997: Publishing Bellar's formula for calculating digits of the Pi number
1999: Linmodem
2000: Calculating the largest known prime number (source code is only 438 bytes)
2000: FFmpeg
2001 : TCC (Tiny C Compiler or TinyCC)
2002: TinyGL
2002: QEmacs
2003: QEMU
2004:TinyCC
2005 downloader: DVB-T signal transmitter from PC to TV
2009: Pi world record
2011: Linux computer emulator with JavaScript
Each of these programs could be the crown of a career for any developer, but Fabrice Bellar continues to work.
Fabrice Bellar (left) and Miguel de Icaza (founder of the GNOME and Mono projects) at MIX 07 (June 2007)
Of course, many successful programs are done on inspiration in just a few days with almost no sleep. But this does not mean that you can actually create a dozen such successful programs. After all, each project must then be supported. For example, when Bellar created LZEXE at the age of 17 (the first popular packer of executable files under MS-DOS), he simply gave the program to several friends and uploaded it to BBS. Popularity came by itself and became quite unexpected for the author. This is perhaps the only Bellar program that did not require further support. For the remaining projects, he spent a huge amount of time to guarantee functionality on a variety of platforms, to give the project and documentation a look so that the community could take on its development.
The uniqueness of Fabrice Bellard is not so much in his great ideas (although there are very few such developers), but in his truly incredible ability to implement and design these ideas in the form of ready-made programs that are useful to others. He constantly creates applications that are becoming popular and widely used by other programmers.
Take at least QEMU. Like all the other Bellar’s most famous programs, it is completely freely distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL), was originally created under Linux, ported to various platforms and is now almost completely supported by others. Before QEMU, many emulators formally met the requirements of openness and versatility, but it was Bellar’s development that possessed a combination of performance, reliability and versatility that was unattainable for any competitor. The merit of Bellar is not that he came up with the idea of emulating hardware, but that he was able to transfer it to the tools of an ordinary programmer and tester. Now QEMU for many is a truly indispensable tool.
It seems that Bellar managed to find some balance between the extremes that impede productive work. Every few years, he explores new areas: data compression, numerical methods, signal processing, media formats, but at the same time retains the same pure C, relevant abstractions, and adherence to open licenses. Bellar is not inclined to self-promotion (for example, politely refuses an interview), but an army of programmers and users makes extensive use of the products he creates. For example, among 654 copyright guidelines in QEMU 0.13.0 source code, only 216 belong to it. In other words, he launched the project so successfully that soon after the launch, other programmers invested twice as much intellectual property in it than the author himself!
Fabrice Bellar was born in 1972 and, like many of us, got his first programming experience on a scientific calculator (he had it TI-59). Many of the above projects were made as part of student projects while studying at the Paris Polytechnic School, where he entered in 1990. Among the graduates of this famous educational institution are Gustave Gaspard Coriolis, Henri Poincaré and Benoit Mandelbrot. For example, even the TinyGL launched in 2002 originates from the 3D engine VReng Virtual Reality Engine, which Bellar began working on in 1998.
His record of calculating the Pi number on a home computer, surpassing the results of similar calculations on supercomputers, also probably leads the roots of children's experiments with compact programs for the calculator.
Fabrice Bellar - a kind of superhero from programming. His programs, such as QEMU, LZEXE, and FFmpeg, are used thousands of times a day around the world by many people who have not even heard his name. But his "superpower" is not the same as that of the heroes from the comics, it is not connected with superpowers like the ability to fly or move in time. Instead, discipline, confidence, accuracy, and many years of practice are far more important.
via Software Quality Connection
1989: LZEXE
1996: Harissa
1997: Publishing Bellar's formula for calculating digits of the Pi number
1999: Linmodem
2000: Calculating the largest known prime number (source code is only 438 bytes)
2000: FFmpeg
2001 : TCC (Tiny C Compiler or TinyCC)
2002: TinyGL
2002: QEmacs
2003: QEMU
2004:TinyCC
2005 downloader: DVB-T signal transmitter from PC to TV
2009: Pi world record
2011: Linux computer emulator with JavaScript
Each of these programs could be the crown of a career for any developer, but Fabrice Bellar continues to work.
Fabrice Bellar (left) and Miguel de Icaza (founder of the GNOME and Mono projects) at MIX 07 (June 2007)
Of course, many successful programs are done on inspiration in just a few days with almost no sleep. But this does not mean that you can actually create a dozen such successful programs. After all, each project must then be supported. For example, when Bellar created LZEXE at the age of 17 (the first popular packer of executable files under MS-DOS), he simply gave the program to several friends and uploaded it to BBS. Popularity came by itself and became quite unexpected for the author. This is perhaps the only Bellar program that did not require further support. For the remaining projects, he spent a huge amount of time to guarantee functionality on a variety of platforms, to give the project and documentation a look so that the community could take on its development.
The uniqueness of Fabrice Bellard is not so much in his great ideas (although there are very few such developers), but in his truly incredible ability to implement and design these ideas in the form of ready-made programs that are useful to others. He constantly creates applications that are becoming popular and widely used by other programmers.
Take at least QEMU. Like all the other Bellar’s most famous programs, it is completely freely distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL), was originally created under Linux, ported to various platforms and is now almost completely supported by others. Before QEMU, many emulators formally met the requirements of openness and versatility, but it was Bellar’s development that possessed a combination of performance, reliability and versatility that was unattainable for any competitor. The merit of Bellar is not that he came up with the idea of emulating hardware, but that he was able to transfer it to the tools of an ordinary programmer and tester. Now QEMU for many is a truly indispensable tool.
It seems that Bellar managed to find some balance between the extremes that impede productive work. Every few years, he explores new areas: data compression, numerical methods, signal processing, media formats, but at the same time retains the same pure C, relevant abstractions, and adherence to open licenses. Bellar is not inclined to self-promotion (for example, politely refuses an interview), but an army of programmers and users makes extensive use of the products he creates. For example, among 654 copyright guidelines in QEMU 0.13.0 source code, only 216 belong to it. In other words, he launched the project so successfully that soon after the launch, other programmers invested twice as much intellectual property in it than the author himself!
Fabrice Bellar was born in 1972 and, like many of us, got his first programming experience on a scientific calculator (he had it TI-59). Many of the above projects were made as part of student projects while studying at the Paris Polytechnic School, where he entered in 1990. Among the graduates of this famous educational institution are Gustave Gaspard Coriolis, Henri Poincaré and Benoit Mandelbrot. For example, even the TinyGL launched in 2002 originates from the 3D engine VReng Virtual Reality Engine, which Bellar began working on in 1998.
His record of calculating the Pi number on a home computer, surpassing the results of similar calculations on supercomputers, also probably leads the roots of children's experiments with compact programs for the calculator.
Fabrice Bellar - a kind of superhero from programming. His programs, such as QEMU, LZEXE, and FFmpeg, are used thousands of times a day around the world by many people who have not even heard his name. But his "superpower" is not the same as that of the heroes from the comics, it is not connected with superpowers like the ability to fly or move in time. Instead, discipline, confidence, accuracy, and many years of practice are far more important.
via Software Quality Connection