Ask HN: Outstanding Programmers

&gt; What&#x27;s the secret?<p>I am not an Outstanding Programmer, but I like the advice on productivity from Jonathan Blow, paraphrased: <i>&quot;you don&#x27;t need time management or productivity tips. If you want to complete a project, maximise the time you spend sat on your chair, with the editor open.&quot;</i> That&#x27;s all there is to it.<p>The best way to build a cathedral is one brick at a time. Effort and consistency trumps all. Being a 10x developer has no effect whatsoever on what you can accomplish in work or in life.

I would encourage people to not waste time searching for secrets and shortcuts through life. &quot;Formulas for success&quot; are highly-dependent on too many factors to replicate, and often are specific to the person who used it to their advantage.<p>The overwhelming vast majority of people (in any industry, art or craft) will never achieve fame, fortune and recognition, and many that DO actually find it to be an empty, existentially-void experience. Others receive it posthumously, at which point you could argue &#x27;does it even matter?&#x27;<p>Just write programs if you love to do it! Your ideas aren&#x27;t that good (mine aren&#x27;t either), and you aren&#x27;t special (nor am I), but plenty of &#x27;unremarkable&#x27; people have conjured pure magic out of seemingly-mediocre concepts that end up helping people solve a problem, or bring them delight, or impact their lives positively.<p>I personally believe anybody can find success if they just focus on the journey and the joy of coding, make sure they show up and participate, be present, stay curious and playful, and don&#x27;t expect any rewards for their efforts. The real reward is having fun and feeling fulfilled while you&#x27;re creating something.

Don&#x27;t build one project. You&#x27;ll be forever putting it off or finding excuses not to work on it.<p>Build two. Then you can procrastinate on each by working on the other.

I&#x27;m Swedish. We have quite a few of these guys. For every &quot;public&quot; one of these, there are many that are absolute monster programmers that don&#x27;t market themselves at all. I&#x27;ve worked with a few.<p>I&#x27;m just gonna throw in this link because I think it&#x27;s great:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetmuseum.se&#x2F;english&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetmuseum.se&#x2F;english&#x2F;</a><p>Among other crazy stories, Daniel is featured there. My favourite story is that the TLD .se was was ran by a guy in in his living room for years until The Swedish Internet foundation took it over.<p>There&#x27;s also Kazaa and the guys behind The Pirate Bay. Real OG hackers from that era.<p>W.r.t. to your question I think it&#x27;s relevant to say that &quot;most things invented then&quot; were &quot;simple&quot; ideas but hard to implement due to the tooling in that time and lack of programmers. But if you were good, you could go at it alone or with a small team. I think that it&#x27;s a little bit inverted now: finding good, novel ideas in the space that can be done by one person or a small team is hard, but building and shipping it, if you do, is probably a lot easier due to OSS.<p>Oh and naturally the all-Swedish version is better at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetmuseum.se&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetmuseum.se&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m just a tryhard. However, I&#x27;ve been coding since a child out of a weird love&#x2F;obsession. Nothing super successful in the public space, but I retired at 40 to spend time building my cathedral: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adama-platform.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adama-platform.com&#x2F;</a><p>my history: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adama-platform.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;euler.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adama-platform.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;euler.html</a>

I&#x27;d avoid hero worshiping someone&#x27;s life given how much of success revolves around being smart enough to be able to take advantage of opportunities, whilst also not suffer from physical, mental or familial setbacks whilst being born into a class&#x2F;race&#x2F;gender that promotes you. All the while not being distracted by things such as family goals, drugs&#x2F;vices or commitments and having time, experience and most critically reputation which can be used to snowball into greater achievements.<p>To take nothing from Ludvig, simply explaining why not everyone can be him.

Most also look like hobby projects more than professional, so I would imagine having a lot of free time is a prerequisite. I don&#x27;t know anything about the guy but all of the things you listed are reimplementing something that already existed, which is faster given at least the requirements are very clear.

Reading through the comments, it seems a significant factor in success is perceived to be the availability of free time. This aligns with my own observations. However, as a father of young children, I wonder if there are examples of life plans that successfully combine family with exciting, successful software projects. I can only think of outstanding programmers who, during the prime of their creative work, were (apparently) free, unattached individuals without (forgive my blunt assumption) significant family ties. Am I mistaken? Are there counterexamples? In my experience, the most relevant skill one develops (and must develop) as a father is discipline and time management. Surely, that has to count for something, right?

I know one who is outstanding, not a 10x but a 100x. Here&#x27;s a short and incomplete list of some of the things he did:<p><pre><code> Publish games (with an &#x27;s&#x27;) on 16 bit computers when he was a teenagers (and good games at that) Industrial software to minimize cuts and losses when cutting sheets of metal Write tools easing the creation of games for smartphone when they came out and put a commercial game in the top 3 of the Apple appstore Before that : he wrote several apps for Nokia phones (pre Android era) and serve them using a provisioning server he wrote and hosted himself Write code to port Java code to COBOL for legacy bank infrastructure Write some sort of Google maps before the days, from aerial pictures he managed to fetch through some people he knew Created a software company, got funding Got interested I cryptocurrencies, wrote several wallets, including for smartphones Wrote servers transcoding videos in real time Wrote an Amiga mod player for the Atari ST (that one was really cool Find and write detailed reports about JVM bugs There are many standards he knows by heart Countless websites He was doing ML before it LLM broke through: teaching 3D &quot;things&quot; to learn to move Monitoring and visualization on embedded devices for solar panels&#x2F;micro inverters efficiency </code></pre> He moved to devops and loves it. And he still codes.<p>His secret is a life of passion for the trade.<p>There s nothing he s worked on that didn&#x27;t become faster, cleaner. There s not a single place he s been too where he didn&#x27;t have things to teach people (and things to learn too: passion and curiosity).<p>He knows so many languages: from assembly to C to C++ to Java to Kotlin to Lua to ML languages to so many scripting languages.<p>Front end, back end, from huge servers to tiny embedded stuff. Dumbphones. Smartphones.<p>The only family of language I know he s never done is Lisp (so I get some creds).<p>He s not just a developer: he manages servers too, both for fun and professionally... and found a recent love for devops (working for a major payment processor as I type this).<p>He s 50 y&#x2F;o and he ll kick your sorry ass like you have no idea.<p>He happens to be a very good friend of mine and when I hear that there are no 10x programmers I cannot help but laugh in a condescending manner.<p>He is, unlike me, humble. He ll say he doesn&#x27;t know much. He s always got a desire to learn.<p>And I think most of all: when he was 30 he thought programmers who were 50 had many things to teach him.

I no longer work much in the ruby world, but when I did I would run into libraries by @ankane on almost a weekly basis. Prolific, and covering a bunch of academic fields and languages. It felt a bit like every area I became interested in, he was already out on the edge.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ankane?tab=repositories&amp;type=source">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ankane?tab=repositories&amp;type=source</a>

Firstly im not comparing myself to that guy, but you could say i have similar “odds” with starting companies and having them succeed, and I&#x27;m a solo developer.<p>Ive build close to 100 projects and companies that have generated over 1B in revenue combined with only one other person (the non-tech owner). I dont have a team, I just build alone on all these.<p>A few notes:<p>I have programmed for over 30,000 hours. 3x what people say the time is to mastery is<p>I look at things in a way that i haven’t really ever heard anyone else explain. I’m not sure if it’s unique but it IS the reason. Everything in my mind is a complex web of cause and effect down to the most nuanced level. In my mind it has a visual aspect even. You have causes (knobs and dials you can turn) to produce effects.<p>Part of meditation is that you can learn an idea more deeply (insight). This same idea sort of applies to what I said above. People miss the magnitude of this cause and effect statement. I’ve told many people and they’re like sure cool. In my mind this statement is like standing next to the tallest mountain. The magnitude and depth is profound. It’s of this magnitude because it means you are in direct control of your own outcomes. Anything you want, is a solvable puzzle. Literally. And the deeper level of insight you feel about this idea the more you are capable of.<p>Now for the actual process of how to navigate this cause and effect. My mind operates on a value formula. Every single decision, word, line of code, micro decision is basically a tradeoff decision. Not in terms of code performance but in terms of this cause and effect web, of EVERY action in physical reality. I have excellent ability to “project” causes outward and then find the “end result”, and essentially find the fastest path from A-&gt;B to get there. And this value formula always optimizes RESULTS over other things many other great programmers optimize for like knowledge. I just have a different style. So basically I&#x27;m always analyzing every single tradeoff as if I see “threads” of reality extending from every decision and what path I go down. As a simple example I might learn linear algebra and Bayesian statistics extremely intensely for 7 days to learn or build an algorithm, but then I hit a diminishing return where I will switch to something else knowing i can hire someone later to teach me and fill in gaps.<p>This is an extremely simple contrived example. In real life, instead of there being 2 variables there would be like 50.

A big part of my thirties has been making peace with the reality that I&#x27;m not that guy, and trying to balance that with still wanting to excel in the ways I can.<p>I don&#x27;t have a better answer for you than the ones already posted here, but I am genuinely curious to read the responses to this.

Focus.<p>Another well-known example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;</a>

Motivation to succeed.<p>I&#x27;m a very good programmer, but not that motivated. Given the right effort I&#x27;m reasonably sure I could build a number of successful apps. I just don&#x27;t want to spend my life doing that. Instead I&#x27;m a hobbyist creative writer, an excellent cook, a father who&#x27;s there for his kids, and a helpful husband. After I&#x27;m through with those things, there isn&#x27;t much time left to build anything.<p>Others want to build software products and make money from them, and those who have the motivation to do this, usually do.<p>You only get one life, choose wisely.

Rome wasn&#x27;t built in a day and it wasn&#x27;t built alone. IMO the best programmers are the ones that can build a community around a shared vision. By this metric, Andreas Kling has done an incredible job with the Serenity project. Although he&#x27;s a certainly a good programmer, I believe the project succeeded because of his EQ and general kindness. Too many brilliant programmers are lacking in that department.<p>You can be a brilliant programmer, but there&#x27;s zero hope of building anything like Serenity as a one man band.

Keeping focus is definitely key here. I also program a lot and I also develop open source stuff but develop software without a company&#x2F;people that drive the features is really hard. When I developed a product for my mother I also had better focus. And having a huge amount of games in my Steam library makes it even more difficult. Not to mention my need to watch lists of multiple steaming services...

Enjoying programming and having the time outside of work. When it&#x27;s a passion it all becomes a lot easier.<p>The problem is that most developers see programming as their 9 to 5 and outside of that, in little free time they have, they have other pursuits and hobbies.<p>When you see what other programmers achieve who have the time and treat it as an art (Vs work) it&#x27;s natural for them to have higher productivity.

I kinda give up looking up to those people. It&#x27;s probably just my excuses but I believe some people have the right combination of hard work, intelligence, persistence and luck to make it work.<p>IMHO, the more you look up to those people, the more agony you shoot at yourself. You can&#x27;t &quot;learn&quot; what is natural to these guys.<p>Just don&#x27;t do it. Don&#x27;t even read about those guys -- ordinary programmers don&#x27;t understand them anyway. Find some happiness FIRST.<p>Maybe block HN. Why am I even here?

Do what you are passionate about, despite the odds and what other think of your skill level. Your skills will shine throughout all aspects!

OpenTDD is so great. I played the original when i was a kid. As a 35 yr adult i found OpenTDD and can i just say i love its multiplayer…

Not a programmer, but this book helped me pretend I am one from time to time. The tips are useful for any kind of learning: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pragprog.com&#x2F;titles&#x2F;ahptl&#x2F;pragmatic-thinking-and-learning&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pragprog.com&#x2F;titles&#x2F;ahptl&#x2F;pragmatic-thinking-and-lea...</a>

Ludde is really a star as well as a great guy but he also dedicates his life to programming due to his disabilities (he&#x27;s wheelchair bound), if one of the few ways you could distract yourself was through coding you could also probably build a lot of stuff if putting in the effort day in day out.

What makes you say that these are all Stenbergs creations?<p>Could it be that these are just projects that use libcurl in some way?<p>I&#x27;m having trouble finding any sources that say that Daniel Stenberg actually worked on spotify, utorrent or openttd directly - just to test three of them.

Do what you are passionate about, despite the odds or what other people think about you. People will acknowledge your skill whether they see them or not. Stay hungry, and stay humble!

&quot;the secret&quot; is spending a long serial period of time deep in architecting solutions because the time you spend doing that kind of work compounds like interest.

Related HN thread: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28814161">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28814161</a>

not having 996 job<p>not having unpaid oncall forcing you to wake up 3 times on Friday night for years<p>having enough savings and legal residence status to be able to take risks<p>not working for compulsory military substitution without option to quit for years<p>not having your government to kidnap males in broad daylight to be sent to die in trenches at war

&gt; What&#x27;s the secret?<p>Probably just time. If we assume that the time frame for all of this was 30 years, this means that he completed one of this projects aprox. every 3 years. This does not look that exceptional to me. The question is, what else he did during this time. In order to assess his work efficiency, we would need to know how many hours he really had to spend on this projects.

von Neumann could do calculus when he was 8. Some people are just born that way

Justine Tunney: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justine.lol&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justine.lol&#x2F;</a>

What is an outstanding programmer? There are two answers depending upon whom you ask.<p>There are people who can build ambitious things at higher performance and durability while expending dramatically low comparative effort. Then there are people with influence.<p>It’s typically the later group that gets 80% of the attention because it’s challenging to discern expertise without being an expert yourself. So, forget all that if you want to become a much better programmer.<p>How to become an expert (many comments here already mention this)?<p>- know your compile target<p>- know your current projects goal<p>- write code<p>- provide iterative improvements<p>Where most people fail is impatience, as in skipping directly to the end state, probably by skinning some prior existing solution. This is bad because you’ve learned nothing and released a solution where everything that doesn’t scale.