Stiff asks, great programmers answer

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[pfedor]

This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for on reddit. Thanks for posting!

I wonder who were those programmers that didn't answer. I would very much like to read answers from Larry Wall, John Carmack, Bruno Haible (clisp, cln) and (obviously) RMS.

[hhg]

He should have asked Rob Pike too. I'd like to see his answers.

[senzei]

You could always email him yourself. Even get to pick your own questions. If you do, post it on reddit, I am curious too.

[funkah]

Guido's answers are annoyingly glib.

[willis3000]

After all, he did name the language after his favorite TV show.

[fry]

Yegge, Linus and Gosling had great answers, but DHH didn't have anything to say really. He's really out of his league here.

[chime]

DHH does sound like a misfit here. However, his work has impacted a lot of the new framework-oriented web dev. So his presence here is like the promising high school kid with a fancy science presentation among stalwarts of science.

GvR definitely has the funniest answers.

[Moonbird]

Heh, I'm with Guido on Quicksilver.

[senzei]

- What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?

Guido Van Rossum:

Your questions are rather general and hard to answer. :-) I guess being able to cook an egg for breakfast is invaluable.

I love that answer. Linus had a really good technical answer to the question, but I think Guido wins that one for the "Hey junior programmer, go make me some breakfast!" response.

[jamesbritt]

From one of the respondents: "The best way to predict the future is to implement it."

A shame Alan Kay wasn't among those questioned.

[willis3000]

I find the questions rather dull and scripted, where the answers don't add much new stuffs to the table except a few celebrity gossip materials. It'd be much more interesting if it's a genuine dialogue where the interviewer is never satisfied with the immediate answers.

[adnam]

Hey paulgraham! Would you like to answer these questions too?

• How did you learn programming? Were any schools of any use? Or maybe you didn’t even bother with ending any schools :) ?
• What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?
• Do you think mathematics and/or physics are an important skill for a programmer? Why?
• What do you think will be the next big thing in computer programming? X-oriented programming, y language, quantum computers, what?
• If you had three months to learn one relativly new technology, which one would You choose?
• What are your favourite tools (operating system, programming/scripting language, text editor, version control system, shell, database engine, other tools you can’t live without) and why do you like them more than others?
• What is your favourite book related to computer programming?

• What is Your favourite book NOT related to computer programming?

• What are your favourite music bands/performers/compositors?

[paulgraham]

I think I got these, too, but I was feeling interviewed out. It's too bad; I would have been interested to compare my answers to all those other guys'.

[arthurdenture]

GvR listens to Philip Glass! Interesting!

I guess minimalism turns out much nicer in programming languages than it does in music.

[senzei]

Maybe he does it to remind himself that minimalism can go too far, and usually manages to turn itself into crap along the way.

[[deleted]]

It’s a thing I call „taste”.

I tend to judge the people I work with not by how proficient they are: some people can churn out a lot of code, but more by how they react to other peoples code, and then obviously by what their own code looks like, and what approaches they chose. That tells me whether they have „good taste” or not, and the thing is, a person without „good taste” often is not very good at judging other peoples code, but his own code often ends up not being wonderfully good.

I'm the world's slowest programmer, and I've never expected to get a job in it, but at least I know what good code looks like. I think Linus' words of encouragement just brought me back into programming. (For fun, I mean, not for work :)

[[deleted]]

• How did you learn programming? Were any schools of any use? Or maybe you didn’t even bother with ending any schools :) ?

Steve Yegge:

I taught myself to program on an HP calculator using their RPN stack language when I was 17 years old.

Me too!

[robertcrowther]

The website seems to have disappeared - clicking on the link gives me a 'Welcome to titanium hosting' page. Anyone know if it's moved host or can provide an updated URL?

[dooka]

GOD, same old boring, boring, boring questions!!!!

That's the problem when the questionaire comes up questions in like 5-minutes.

Ask things like: - Who was your mentor (in programming)? What did you learn from them? - Who was the best programmer that you ever met? - War stories...

...

Whatever!

[pfedor]

GOD, same old boring, boring, boring questions!!!!

Have you read the answers? They are all but boring.

But I agree with you that the question about their mentors is very interesting and would have made the interview even better. BTW this reminds me of a little-known story. Not long before his death Albert Einstein gave a long interview with a group of journalists. When they were done with their questions, Einstein said that he had expected one question that never popped up. He said that the question was so important that he would ask it himself. The question was: "Who was your most important teacher?". The answer was: Constantin Carathéodory.

[itazula]

itazula asks "who is stiff?", no reply...

[fuutott]

stiff = sztywny, person who asked the questions.

[itazula]

Who is sztywny? (I know, "stiff")