alt.hn

6/3/2026 at 8:00:14 AM

It is an amazing time for programmers

 https://46elks.com/blog/2026/05/29/an-amazing-time-for-programmers

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 11:30:54 AM

Quite the gap.

The legends the article talks about are legends because they either started a project that blew up in popularity and/or solved a demanded problem with original code.

For most people writing software for a living that is gone. Its been gone since I started writing software 20 years ago. The goal post has moved. Its no longer about solving any problem. Its about hiring.

The distinction is massive. Most of the people doing this work will never encounter an important problem to solve or write original code. Instead they will use tools and modify templates. There is still some troubleshooting there, but no originality. Its like being a plumber. Plumbers still make good money, but they aren't engineers. Now, with AI being pushed on everybody even becoming something like a plumber is becoming a distant gap for the next generation.

The most clear exception are hobbyists, which has always been there as an exception through my years writing software. The only real distinction between most of these hobbyists and the legends is obscurity. The very real distinction between the hobbyists and less original professional is time spent practicing.

by austin-cheney

6/3/2026 at 11:42:12 AM

Reminds me of when Jensen Huang recently compared Linux to OpenClaw and showed this ridiculous GitHub star comparison. To me these projects are incomparable.

by suncemoje

6/3/2026 at 12:30:00 PM

It's worth remembering that when people like Jensen talk publicly, they most of time are addressing investors in various indirect and direct ways. Comparing Linux with OpenClaw is obviously bullshit and irrelevant, for almost everyone except clueless investors who like that sort of stuff. He's saying those things for the people who neither understand Linux nor OpenClaw, but have lots of money regardless.

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 1:13:57 PM

Yeah, GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality.

I have been contemplating a rating system for open source software with a mandatory tag for each star. Allows you to filter out perspectives you don’t care about.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 1:17:06 PM

> GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality

Becoming? :D Since day one, me and other's have called it a vanity metric, and trying to push back on hiring decisions being made over what developers have the most starred repositories/followers (no joke, one place I worked at almost hired one developer over another because of their "total star count" :'( ).

Stars been around for as long as GitHub been around, and people actively shouting to get people to stop caring so much about stars been around for the same time yet.

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 2:01:52 PM

Have these stars ever been useful at all? For me they've been just a cute noise ever since they were introduced. A rough proxy for project's visibility in a certain specific context, nothing more.

by seba_dos1

6/3/2026 at 11:37:48 AM

I agree with you. There's a saying in Korea and East Asia: 'Open source is a moat.' This might sound difficult, but it means that if you're trying to sell a product, its quality or UX/UI basically needs to be better than what's already publicly available in open source — and that's not easy.

As the era becomes increasingly advanced, the cognitive cost of making a single project public keeps rising. But if you try to use an LLM to share or assist, there are many people who say LLMs are bad.

It's a difficult problem

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 12:06:00 PM

In a previous post I lamented that my I should no longer call myself a software developer - after all, I write my own code!

Maybe there should be a distinction between software creators and programmers.

by lelanthran

6/3/2026 at 12:10:51 PM

In the same way there’s a distinction between writers and typists, and you really don’t hear anything about typists these days.

by brookst

6/3/2026 at 1:11:32 PM

> In the same way there’s a distinction between writers and typists, and you really don’t hear anything about typists these days.

Not sure that analogy applies. I'd compare it to the difference between an engineer building a bridge and a politician ring-fencing the funds for it.

by lelanthran

6/3/2026 at 11:36:55 AM

As my brother said once with exasperation: "I got into this business to write code, and now I'm just an integrator."

by laughing_man

6/3/2026 at 11:42:27 AM

integrator -> plumber

by amelius

6/3/2026 at 12:38:04 PM

personally I don't find this particularly unappealing and have often referred to myself as some sort of plumber. plumbing is all about connecting standardized interfaces (threads) and then some improvisation. in IT the amount of improvisation is higher due to less standardized interfaces and interfaces are more complex. but the analogy works and I enjoy thinking about how to make interfaces exchange information efficiently.

by raffael_de

6/3/2026 at 12:12:18 PM

If you choose that direction, yes. But you can also choose integrator -> CPO.

by brookst

6/3/2026 at 12:09:59 PM

> “… will never encounter an important problem to solve or write original code.”

I’m sure you’re right. Though, let me add, there are a lot of minuscule problems in the small business space. Not fame and fortune level, but gratifying nevertheless.

by xtiansimon

6/3/2026 at 9:06:10 AM

I wrote an essay and sent it to Chomsky once. He wrote back that he probably won't have time to read it.

Some years ago I realized that I can just start sending emails to an OSS mailing list. Without introduction just starting to post as if I belonged there. I had already made some grammar fixes more than five years before that but I started to comment and critique submissions. And submitting my own patches. Now checking the mailing list is daily habit. Unfortunately I didn't have time to post the second version of a submission on the bus today (another documentation fix).

People, and especially in my culture, are very good at staying out of places where they do not belong through self-policing alone. Unfortunately to the point where at least I do get stuck in narrow patterns and never even consider certain opportunities.

by chrishill89

6/3/2026 at 11:20:21 AM

Chomsky was always amazing for this.

by senda

6/3/2026 at 9:26:23 AM

I also want to communicate with someone and have programming conversations. There's no one around me to talk about programming with. I'm the only programmer around. Aside from AI and books, I sometimes want to talk with a real person.

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 9:43:46 AM

I gave away an old switch to a guy on Gumtree. He mentioned he was building a machine cabinet. We got talking. He's now my home lab shoptalk guy, and we meet in the pub every other month.

I gave away an old PCB to a guy in gumtree. We got talking. He's now my 3D printer shop talk guy, and we meet at the pub every other month.

It's surprisingly easier to foster your own hacker space if you trade goods in those circles.

Best part is that Gumtree/Craigslist/Kleinanzeigen let you define a radius to meet these people, so they're all local

I'd advise against the "Im lonely..." angle in seeking out these connections, go more for the "hey I've got this thing you might want..." style patter, even if the former is true.

And always use protection.

by tetris11

6/3/2026 at 9:49:55 AM

Awesome. Similar experience to me. Was selling some sim racing gear, and he mentioned he was in fabrication. Now he's my fab guy and we chat heaps.

by domlebo70

6/3/2026 at 9:55:20 AM

Most of my local music production buddies I've met by selling and purchasing second-hand music hardware, as I always sell/buy stuff in driving range, and it's a nice excuse to meet people who like the same stuff as you :) Lots of ways to meet people like this, depending on what you're into.

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 2:53:40 PM

+1 for Good actionable advice.

by rramadass

6/3/2026 at 9:29:43 AM

I found great enjoyment from https://late.sh/. I'm not as active as I would like to be but the small community is still active enought that there is basically always someone around to chat with.

by 8-prime

6/3/2026 at 10:37:26 AM

Can’t connect unfortunately.

debug1: Sending environment. debug1: channel 2: setting env LANG = "en_US.UTF-8" debug2: channel 2: request env confirm 0 debug1: channel 2: setting env LC_TERMINAL = "iTerm2" debug2: channel 2: request env confirm 0 debug1: channel 2: setting env LC_TERMINAL_VERSION = "3.6.10" debug2: channel 2: request env confirm 0 debug1: channel 2: setting env LC_ALL = "en_US.UTF-8" debug2: channel 2: request env confirm 0 debug2: channel 2: request shell confirm 1 debug2: channel_input_open_confirmation: channel 2: callback done debug2: channel 2: open confirm rwindow 8388608 rmax 32768 debug1: mux_client_request_session: master session id: 2 debug2: channel_input_status_confirm: type 99 id 2 debug2: PTY allocation request accepted on channel 2 Connection to late.sh closed by remote host.

by Ocha

6/3/2026 at 10:42:04 AM

Can you try one more time? And if still failing, are you ok with trying the CLI? CLI is a little more bulletproof, have its own ssh client inside.

by bl4ckbe4r

6/3/2026 at 10:46:29 AM

Did some debugging. It works after I disabled compression and control master.

I didn’t like CLI, since it didn’t pick up my default ssh key from the agent.

by Ocha

6/3/2026 at 10:48:00 AM

the CLI also have some args to use, like --key or --ssh-mode :)

by bl4ckbe4r

6/3/2026 at 10:03:19 AM

I am actually blown away by how good it is. Both the features, the UI, everything. wow.

by 0fflineuser

6/3/2026 at 11:58:38 AM

This is amazing, a true gem. I need to get it set up.

by creamyhorror

6/3/2026 at 9:38:44 AM

thanks!

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 10:21:34 AM

If you do end up joining feel free to dm me. same user as here.

by 8-prime

6/3/2026 at 11:26:45 AM

I'm not sure about the DM feature, but I like this more than I thought. I don't have any memories of the TUI environment (most of my memories are from IRC), but it has an IRC feel to it, so I like it

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 11:44:22 AM

For me problem is that talking with developers most of the time is more annoying than it is worth.

Being one-upped all the time, having devs nag about tiny irrelevant flaws just to show who is smarter. Adding just one more sentence to keep upper hand and trying to „make better” when good wasn’t done yet.

When I was younger I also had my fair share of those flaws.

by ozim

6/3/2026 at 11:56:43 AM

Actually, I think all professional fields are similar. But even so, sometimes I still miss having people around

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 12:00:40 PM

> For me problem is that talking with developers most of the time is more annoying than it is worth.

Then why are you on HN? ;)

by amelius

6/3/2026 at 12:32:25 PM

Insecure and overvalued jerks are toxic. If someone can't bring their ego under control and be professional, they're probably better absent or away from customers rather than keeping around.

The best developers are consultative, inquisitive, and focused on delivering value that makes stakeholders' lives easier. No one outside of technical people care about implementation tools or details.

by burnt-resistor

6/3/2026 at 12:14:39 PM

Ha, Ha, Very true though we don't like to admit it to ourselves.

HN is full of these types (myself included when something really triggers me). The amount of trivialities/nitpicking/arguing-for-the-sake-of-arguing going on here is enough to try anybody's patience. I think if i were to discuss things face-to-face with some of the people here it may most probably end in screaming/yelling and fisticuffs ;-)

It is a fundamental Human behavioural trait (i.e. the need to assert dominance through any means) that needs careful regulation in our communications.

I try to deal with these people the Sherlock Holmes way ;-)

"It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it ...

When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.".

by rramadass

6/3/2026 at 12:35:10 PM

> I think if i were to discuss things face-to-face with some of the people here it may most probably end in screaming/yelling and fisticuffs

I had the same feeling, until some years ago I met up with some local HNers and lo and behold; they're nothing like what's going on here typically, just regular people who can have regular (but interesting) conversations :)

I'm guessing for many it's really hard to "read the vibe" when it's just text, and people take everything very literally here, while in real life, even people who write and behave like that here, don't actually act the same.

Maybe facial expressions, body language and more basically solves all those trivialities/nitpicking/arguing-for-the-sake-of-arguing issue, at the very least because those who perpetrate those things, actually can see the "what the fuck is this guy on about" expressions in real-time as they speak to people. That's my guess at least.

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 4:34:30 PM

They are one side of the equation; the other side is us i.e. our ego/character/personality. This factors into how we react to non-verbal cues and how we trigger the other side so now we are caught in a vicious negative cycle.

From that pov, eliminating everything other than pure text (like on HN) is actually a positive. Here we just need to agree to abide by some common rules for the pursuit of curiosity/knowledge and not mere socializing. Don't post everything that comes to your mind, slowdown and think before you post, know your audience, be succinct and to-the-point but with links to further details/study etc.

As an example, 19th century scientists wrote to each other sharing/discussing/refining their ideas/theories. See Explore 19th Century Scientific Correspondence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389055 for the actual and interesting correspondences.

IMO, the following quote very well expresses the power of mediocrity and how it can drag us all down;

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. ... The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.”

― Trevanian, Shibumi

This is what we need to guard against i.e. "not become mediocre" (and add to the inanity on the Internet) in our own communications/behaviour on HN and elsewhere. We need to focus on the s/n ratio always in our communications.

by rramadass

6/3/2026 at 11:05:59 AM

I live in an area dominated by finance and commerce people (New York Suburbs).

I’ve learned not to talk about what I do, as I see eyes glaze over, quickly, when I do.

If I were to talk about the commodities exchanges, though, we’d be chatting up a storm.

I miss having people to talk to, about this stuff. The few techhies around, tend to freeze me out. They all like going into Brooklyn, to hang out.

I guess that’s one reason that I’m so busy here.

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/3/2026 at 11:10:32 AM

Which suburb, haha. I’m in Englewood and have similar experience of very few tech folks around.

by clbrmbr

6/3/2026 at 11:11:46 AM

Long Island (Huntington area).

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/3/2026 at 9:37:29 AM

I (software engineer) have lived with a software engineer for 14 years. We (half jokingly, somewhat seriously) refer to non-software engineers as "real persons", or human-humans.

by ZaoLahma

6/3/2026 at 11:36:05 AM

AKA "Normies" (heard on Scott Hanselman's podcast)

by francisofascii

6/3/2026 at 11:30:20 AM

I recently moved to London. Would be really really happy to meet up with others who enjoy computers/hobbyists. If you have a blog, I'm interested in meeting you! There are too many corporate events here and almost no hobbyist groups.

by UpAndOut

6/3/2026 at 9:35:12 AM

In most places there are software meetups, in my area there are many at meetup.com. I once started one myself, that later got taken over and is still quite big. Actually a lot of fun, and at the time we would even get sponsoring offers quite quickly.

by wouldbecouldbe

6/3/2026 at 9:38:05 AM

I don't have that kind of gathering on side. There are no programming meetups. It's an industrial area. My job mostly involves programming equipment operation using WinForm and WPF. I sometimes wish there were such meetups too. Around here, it's all factories

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 9:48:30 AM

Create your own low-stakes "Beer & Programming" or whatever is doable where you live.

I grew up on a island where there was maybe one or two other people who knew computers enough to know programming as a thing existed as a concept, but similarly to you, absolutely nothing else, and it gets very lonely and outright boring after a while.

I solved this (accidentally) by moving to another area, but isn't possible for everyone, then the closest you can get to that would be to bring people closer to where you are instead, or start up something small and reoccurring :)

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 9:51:38 AM

Thank you for your advice.

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 11:37:15 AM

yeah you can just start your own! meetup (and if you have fb groups) have a good chance to bring in lots of people.

by wouldbecouldbe

6/3/2026 at 10:38:03 AM

Tangentially, over the last decade or two Meetup.com has allowed me to meet countless people in multiple countries, of whom some became friends. I've got such value out of this commercial service that I frequently find myself worrying about its business model. To me, Meetup is close to being the holy grail: an independent company, an excellent web client with no need to install an app, and it's not integrated with the corporate social platforms. I so want them to continue to prosper.

by bluebarbet

6/3/2026 at 11:09:43 AM

We have them around here.

I stopped going, because the “circle of avoidance” around me makes me self-conscious.

The ageism in New York, is even worse than in Silicon Valley.

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/3/2026 at 11:56:44 AM

What do you mean by circle of avoidance?

by gorjusborg

6/3/2026 at 12:37:29 PM

When I go to these gigs, I tend to be the oldest person there.

No one makes eye contact, and no one looks at me. I find it extremely difficult to start conversations, and I'm a fairly gregarious chap. There's usually a space around me, about a meter wide; even when it's crowded.

The good news is, I rarely have trouble finding a seat.

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/3/2026 at 11:17:20 AM

[dead]

by jdw64

6/3/2026 at 12:46:41 PM

back in the days of LAN parties, assembling PCs, making your own website with HTML/CSS/Perl, torrenting music etc. it seemed like a lot of random people around me had some level of competence and enthusiasm for at least one IT area. this is all gone. while one can argue that given how comfortable UX got and so you no longer need to know what a file is, I nonetheless believe such enthusiasm has never been more important. instead people are happy with what a bunch of mega corporations spoon feed them.

by raffael_de

6/3/2026 at 5:40:09 PM

Not intending to nitpick, but it's interesting that Chris Lattner is listed simply as the creator of Swift. I would have thought his work on LLVM and Mojo would have been at least as well known.

by leetgent

6/3/2026 at 10:46:00 AM

Along similar lines: many of your favorite authors, musicians, and creators have public email addresses and seem to love getting emails. I’ve started writing notes with my kids to their favorite authors with ideas and always a thank you note.

I’ve gotten replies from authors on NYT best sellers lists, musicians, and more.

People like to be appreciated.

by cpfohl

6/3/2026 at 12:34:04 PM

I know some authors in particular never, ever want to be sent story ideas. The potential of being accused of or sued for plagiarism down the track for something even vaguely similar is non-zero.

by anotherevan

6/3/2026 at 12:22:36 PM

Ironically, I've found the best way to engage with creators is their YouTube channels. They're incentivized to engage by the algorithm, so if you can land a thoughtful comment early so they don't have to wade through 500 comments to see it the odds you'll get a short reply or a heart are pretty good.

by CuriouslyC

6/3/2026 at 12:18:17 PM

It's not a great time to be a programmer, it's a great time to be a marketer that can program passably. While 10x programmers are getting ignored on social media, you can use your marketing skills to hype your half baked project into a few thousand GitHub stars, then into investment from a VC.

The exception is game programmers. With AI/engines, making games has never been easier, Steam takes a lot of the guesswork out of packaging/release, and the moat in games is taste/refinement which is very AI resistant.

by CuriouslyC

6/3/2026 at 1:04:38 PM

Damn, sounds like you can make some easy money if you teamed up with a guy who is really good at marketing then, or taught yourself after market.

by FrayedKnot

6/3/2026 at 9:01:09 AM

When I started working in software I took a job in a city different than mine, so I had to go there to live alone, and the job was by myself in a room with no windows. Most lonely 2 years of my life.

by ainiriand

6/3/2026 at 9:49:44 AM

On the other hand, I wasn't working in software but after I moved country, I managed to get my foot into the industry, and it opened up my social life like nothing else, as finally I had people around me who also like software development, something I never experienced for ~18 years or so until I did a drastic move.

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 3:28:31 PM

This is my life. I drive to the office 5 days per week to sit in a tiny windowless room. I have meetings with Europe in the morning and meetings with India in the evening. The rare time I need to talk to someone in the US, they are in a different building so we talk through Teams.

by OnionBlender

6/3/2026 at 10:08:15 AM

I rejected a job like that early in my career.

by sshine

6/3/2026 at 8:57:27 AM

I wrote an email to Mike Pall once and got a very refreshing reply.

Daniel Stenberg is not on the list but he is also a very active programmer on social media like LinkedIn that you can interact with.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 9:27:45 AM

This is the way! Email is great. I've written to many famous people, and from time to time, gotten replies. I've sold SaaS and consultants for 100s of k of USD, all through emails. It's an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

by abc123abc123

6/3/2026 at 10:08:38 AM

Yeah, surely this will come to an end soon. My personal email is full of AI-generated recruiter email. I still read all my email (well, not the Updates or Promotions tabs in gmail), but I 'm not in any way famous.

by titanomachy

6/3/2026 at 2:05:16 PM

Pro tip! Don't share your email with recruiters, and you won't get AI-generated recruiter emails. I get about 1 spam message every 2 months or so.

by abc123abc123

6/3/2026 at 12:57:16 PM

I think it's great that you can still follow people like Lawrence Paulson and Moshe Vardi. It's not only a great time for programmers but also for computer scientists. Platforms like LinkedIn make it easy to share a quick observation or question, and occasionally getting a reaction from leading researchers is one of the things that keeps me interested in the field.

by alf42red

6/3/2026 at 1:17:18 PM

Very much this. Especially Daniel Stenberg or for Sweden more locally famous coders like Christian Landgren are very approachable on LinkedIn.

Makes for an intresting conversation and you can learn a lot by posting a well thought comment :)

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 9:32:12 AM

I constantly wonder what life was like, then, for the earliest inventors, scientists, and curious minds in our history. Surely they didn't have many people to bounce ideas or build things with. How did they find the strength to persist in their interests? These days, it's far easier to quit when you cannot find community since you can distract yourself with many kinds of entertainment instead; and with bleak economic outlook everywhere, the very act of persistence itself can feel rather pointless.

by rTX5CMRXIfFG

6/3/2026 at 9:52:56 AM

Maybe it's a bit over-generalized, but I generally find there are two types of people in world, the important one here is the one's who are genuinely curious, and they tend to be that about everything, especially things they don't understand.

Growing up rural, I had about zero people interested in technology around me, even less about programming. But, there was a few of those "curious people" who I talked to about computers and programming. They mostly had no idea, but they were interested, and engaging to talk about, they acted more like a wall to bounce the ball against, rather than actually mentoring me for programming, or whatever.

Anyways, these people, the curious ones, exists everywhere, even in rural areas, even in places with less than 1000 people. They tend to be seen maybe as eccentric, odd or weird, but you can talk to them about everything and anything, and you'll still probably learn something, if not about the subject, maybe about yourself or maybe about your new friend :)

by embedding-shape

6/3/2026 at 9:47:12 AM

They did have immense networks and were constantly communicating with one another. In On the Origin of Species, I was amazed how Darwin basically knew all the top breeders and naturists form South America, Arab Gulf, Oceania, which he mentions by name. He mentions his peers from the first page in the introduction and the correspondence and responses he got from them.

There's not many geniuses without an ecosystem around them that produced them. And even if there are, how would we know about them if they weren't well connected enough to start mattering?

by gobdovan

6/3/2026 at 11:02:31 AM

Famously Leibniz was a genious comparable to Newton, but we have only recently started to learn the scope of his thinking and research, since most of it was left unpublished.

by delis-thumbs-7e

6/3/2026 at 9:37:24 AM

They wrote a lot of letters to each other. That's effectively how the Royal Society started, as the formalization of a network of letter writers

by johngossman

6/3/2026 at 9:40:17 AM

I would say that a big part of research in Ye Old Days was either your local peers and colleagues but especially it was exchanging letters with the known Big Names in their respective fields. It is not without reason that nowadays that correspondence between researchers is a great source of insight.

by Leptonmaniac

6/3/2026 at 12:14:36 PM

Imagine being Andrew Tridgell and watching your inbox blow up today with thousands of emails from complete strangers, all just saying hi and wanting to casually chat with you. He's probably scratching his head right now and wondering what is going on

by whack

6/3/2026 at 3:23:52 PM

Would probably sth memoreable and positive for him :)

I doubt he’ll get more than a handful.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 11:58:22 AM

Wow, I was always amazed by Andrew Tridgill's prolific contributions to ardupilot / mavlink when I did some minor work on those. Had no idea he was behind rsync and samba.

by foobarbecue

6/3/2026 at 9:29:32 AM

Amazing how these people are even reachable via phone, their numbers are pretty easy to find.

by nkjoep

6/3/2026 at 9:58:01 AM

Yep, the biggest blocker for a good conversation is people simply not writing an email or trying to make that call.

Which is why I wrote this.

Is the same at conferences: one of the best things you can do is to fo and talk to the person holding the lecture. They usually appreciate it very much.

You don’t need to be famous to do that.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 12:31:03 PM

Most famous people are really busy though. Even people who have given me engaged replies often took a month or more to write back.

by CuriouslyC

6/3/2026 at 12:32:07 PM

I want only one thing from the above list;

Somebody sit with Fabrice Bellard and pick his brain on how he thinks, how he organizes projects, how he studies so many different domains, how he implements them, views on work-life balance etc. etc.

Basically i want a brain dump of Fabrice Bellard.

by rramadass

6/3/2026 at 3:29:11 PM

I would certainly read that reply or even better the book!

That’s actually what I asked Mike Pall to do regarding JIT. He was reluctany and probably thinks too little of his teaching ability.. but that book would be awesome for future generations of compiler folks to read!

Back to Bellard, maybe a good first approach is to ping one of his co-authors like the person he made QuickJS with.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 9:47:13 AM

One should go for it if they enjoy it, yes. On the other hand, life and work is not meant to be spent in full time worldwide interaction either.

If someone want to interact with people like Linus Torvalds, they should be aware that in his case he publicly admitted the way he interacted with other was toxic[1]. To be clear, it’s no personal attack against him, it’s about the kind of interaction that can and does occur with largely celebrated figures in general. If anything at least in that case there is some recognition of the issue, though fair credit should probably given also to all people beyond the scene who certainly made tremendous effort for this to happen.

And things like popular micro-blogging platforms are notoriously known to cause interaction going toxic[2].

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean its a nice path to thrive for everybody.

To each their own judgment, but at least consider the tradeoffs.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07229-y

by psychoslave

6/3/2026 at 10:04:15 AM

Yeah, it’s not about spamming people but overcoming the imposter syndrome.

Learning to find this balance of not being annoying is probably easiest by trying to make relevant comments on someones tweet. And the response back will give you an energy boost! :)

These people are much more approachable than people generally believe.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 2:49:17 PM

I am not sure why people keep picking on Linus Torvalds. If anything Linus has been extremely patient and accommodating of the thousands of people who do no homework w.r.t. technical subjects before contacting him, or if experienced, make inexcusable (at their level) blunders.

If you approach an expert, you need to be clear in your communication, know the subject you are talking about and in general be aware that experts find trivialities aggravating and are not obliged to suffer your ignorance.

by rramadass

6/3/2026 at 10:40:17 AM

Will there ever be any more “legendary” programmers ever again now with the rise of AI basically making any coding accomplishments unimpressive?

by deadbabe

6/3/2026 at 11:09:56 AM

Show me the AI generated code that puts the work of these people to shame.

There probably won't be any more "legendary" programmers in the future. Not because AI is qualitatively superior but because the incentives of capitalism will force us all to accept the mediocrity of AI generated software and because the lack of opportunities and loss of knowledge created by mass deskilling will make education and community impossible.

by krapp

6/3/2026 at 2:28:57 PM

I guess the only “legendary” programmers would be independently wealthy millionaires and billionaires who code for fun. But no one will truly know they are even legendary because no one will care about code the same way.

by deadbabe

6/3/2026 at 11:03:08 AM

> Take the opportunity to send one of them an email or tweet.

But ... why?

I don't understand why I should write an email to Linus. Or Phil. Or Pete. Or Joe. I can barely keep up with the influx of existing emails as-is. Do I really want to extend to this and have to read through even MORE emails now?!

by shevy-java

6/3/2026 at 3:40:07 PM

Relevant critique of this article. I should probably have elaborated more on WHY one should dare to do that and HOW you can that in a respectful and mutual way.

How to increase the signal and not the noise.

Sending an email without any clear purpose is not something I would encourge. But a highly thoughtful email about some of their works or question you have about a recent piece of code is probably appreciated. Genuine conversation.

The easiest way to start your journey towards overcoming the imposter syndrome while not burdening someone is to reply to a recent tweet.

If you have something relevant to say that is. But you probably do: more often than not.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 11:26:17 AM

This seems to be a submarine advertisement for a telephony API startup.

It seems like it's been around for a few years so it probably isn't vibe-coded, but I do wonder if even small services like this will inevitably be gobbled up by AI. Like I know it probably isn't the case but I've become so jaded now that I'm looking at their teams page and wonder if these are even real people.

Yes it's an amazing time for programmers but only in a "twilight of the gods" sense. The time for community passed about a decade ago, before Twitter turned into a Nazi bar and everything went entirely to shit. There's a little bit left but it's dying fast. Why would any of these people want to waste their time talking to the community that wants to assimilate their work and replace it with the mediocre shit dribbled from a Claude prompt? These people don't need your emails, they're probably already deluged with bots as it is.

by krapp

6/3/2026 at 12:20:08 PM

Author here.

Actually wrote the draft on this in January but last week finally got enough time to complete this with proper project links etc.

We are certainly real people, except for one of the faces on our /support page who’s signature we use when replying to particularly aggressive fraudsters (to avoid feeling personally offended).

The service might look easy on the surface, but getting all required infrastructure in place here in Europe is hard and the telecom world is surprisingly complex.

”I am jealous at you guys: backend services still has a future” a coder friend told me today at lunch.

On topic, I obviously don’t think the community train has passed.

Especially on meetups I see a lot of genuine connections between programmers being made. Threads, the app, has recently been the most relevant place for me to casually chat with other programmers.

I don’t vouch for people to spam: but to overcome their imposter syndrome and dare to talk about coding with fellow programmers. Even the legends.

And they often invite for conversations: wether it’s a comment field, pull request or tweet.

by jlundberg

6/3/2026 at 9:35:53 AM

Why stop at these people. You might as well reach out to Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Jansen Huang. There's more to life than tech companies. Why not reach out to the president. It takes less effort than you might think to reach out to anyone in the world. It is truly a small place.

by charcircuit

6/3/2026 at 9:54:51 AM

If you email a CEO or President, you're not emailing them. You're emailing a team of EAs who are filtering for them. Their fame leads to a lot of problems in the inbox: begging letters, death threats, and irrelevant noise more than you can imagine.

They also don't know much that you can probably make use of. They might think they do, and you might think they do, but they got there mostly through knowing how to talk to boards and investors, not by being able to engage deeply in expertise that is applicable to most people looking to make their way in the World - and if becoming a CEO of a major tech firm or President is the thing you need the help with, you probably know them or people like them already.

I've met quite a few famous people in tech over the years, particularly open source, and have had some short and some long conversations with many of them. I've found most people pretty approachable.

I also know through another side of my life quite a few people in the media and am an acquaintance of someone who is a household name in the UK. Through him, I've met famous sports people, writers, actors, etc., and through that and other networks I know people who have worked behind the scenes on major TV and theatre shows who have met hundreds of famous people.

The one thing that unifies all of them is obvious, but seemingly lost on a lot of people who "other" those whose names are known to them despite never meeting them: they're all just human.

They're not "other", they're us. Including everyone you see on TV, everyone you have read about in magazines, everyone you see on a stage.

They have to put up with being recognised and people dealing with them in strange ways (how would you really deal with a stranger asking for a selfie while you were eating dinner with your family in a restaurant?), but they still do all the things you and I do. As the old saying goes, they all have to put their trousers on one leg at a time in the morning.

I'd definitely encourage people to seek out experts (not just "famous people" unless those people are famous for expertise), and engage them as you'd want to be engaged about your expertise. You'll find most people will be approachable.

But emailing that specific list of people is unlikely going to get you much beyond a template reply from one of their army of assistants.

by PaulRobinson

6/3/2026 at 11:06:49 AM

You don’t want to reach out to them, because you don’t want that kind of peiple in your life. You might as well start hanging with the local biker gang or start selling drugs on the corner.

(Maybe Cook and Huang are not that bad, but Musk and Trump I’d like in my life as much as cancer).

by delis-thumbs-7e

6/3/2026 at 10:03:57 AM

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by gbkgbk

6/3/2026 at 12:04:02 PM

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by Rekindle8090

6/3/2026 at 10:06:07 AM

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by mnmnmn

6/3/2026 at 8:21:31 AM

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by mickyarun

6/3/2026 at 9:25:19 AM

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by Dotcomico

6/3/2026 at 11:46:29 AM

Indeed! Got any advice for people who want to go for it and write their first tweet or email?

by jlundberg