I think "he's almost certainly a better programmer than me" is a double form of humility: first, he's assuming that Fabrice Bellard is a better programmer than him based on the evidence and reputation, but he's also admitting that he doesn't have direct knowledge of this. Hence "almost certainly."
replyWell, carmack is THE game dev of 90s and 2000s fame. His 2d/3d engine work was outstanding back in the day.
replyBellard did multiple breakthroughs: ffmpeg, qemu, tcc, jslinux, a state of the art FFT algorithm. I probable skipped a few.
With all due respect to carmack, a single ballard's projects would put anybody into the eternal hall of programmers fame right next to Linus, Carmack, Stallman, the Bell labs crowd and others.
i do understand how carmack did what he did logistically (time, effort, skills, compensation)...
Fabrice is just out of this world. When? How? Why? No idea.
He is also a mathematician, having invented a new algorithm for calculating the digits of pi
replyHere is his paper on it which is a little 2 pager:
replyhttps://bellard.org/pi/pi_bin.pdf
Though I have to say the last line of the proof "...which gives (1) by reordering the terms" took me much head scratching to understand!
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replyits because carmacl enjoys a lot of fame around his tricks. ppl get like that.
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