Ask HN: Who's your role model?

I dont have one. There are some people who have some good traits and habits that I would like to acquire, but I dont get the role model thing. To me it is about process rather than person. "This guy has a great way of doing X" rather than "I want to be like this specific person".

Fabrice Bellard [1,2] should be on this list. Author of QEMU and FFMPEG among other open source projects that have been useful to a lot of people. Also, author of jslinux [3].<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fabrice_Bellard" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fabrice_Bellard</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;jslinux&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bellard.org&#x2F;jslinux&#x2F;</a>

My dad. He came from a small background with lots of brothers and sisters. He got to university and earned a degree in EE (only engineer in his town at that point). Supported his family and did whatever he could for his family. He never showed me any weakness even when his own father died. He has led a very disciplined and amazing life. I just wish I could do&#x2F;achieve 1&#x2F;10th of his life.

Cosma Shalizi (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stat.cmu.edu&#x2F;~cshalizi&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stat.cmu.edu&#x2F;~cshalizi&#x2F;</a>), ever since I discovered this link some 16 years ago: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bactra.org&#x2F;notebooks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bactra.org&#x2F;notebooks&#x2F;</a>

John Carmack. He&#x27;s consistently at the edge of technology - whether it is game engines or avionics. His insights are excellent and can often be used in other areas of engineering &#x2F; software development.

I&#x27;ve come to realize Jean Luc Picard is. Not exclusively, but when coming to my approach managing people, he simply oozes through. Patrick Stewart more broadly, a greatly insightful person.<p>But again, not exclusively; I am not a huge Star Trek fan, yet am a huge fan, nor am I into the idea of replicating someone else, as you are you and not them. Perhaps it was formative years, watching the show as a young teenager, that left a seed there.<p>I find case studies and examples of situations are key. If you&#x27;ve not heard of it, and are managing people, I also hugely recommend a resource in our century: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;manager-tools.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;manager-tools.com</a> a lot of good applicable examples to a wide range of potential people problems and opportunities there.

I greatly admire Donald Knuth. He&#x27;s humble, dedicated to his work in a healthy way, and has fascinating outside interests in organ music, for example.<p>Most of all, I see in him the playful attitude about computer science that Alan Perlis referred to: &quot;I think that it&#x27;s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.&quot;

I&#x27;d say my father is my role model, as hokey as that sounds. He&#x27;s an intelligent man and has spent most of his life driving a truck. But, that&#x27;s what he wants to be doing. I&#x27;d like to ensure that I spend my life doing what I want to do.

Rich Hickey. He&#x27;s brilliant and is arguably the best deeply technical speaker I have ever seen&#x2F;heard.

Jesus Christ is the only one that won&#x27;t disappoint me. All the other great people I&#x27;ll freely take the good parts and forget their mistakes.

There are several people who are very inspiring and important to me.<p>- Paul Graham and Eliezer Yudkowsky<p>The 2 most clever people that I am aware of. I admire the way they write and think, and want to learn to do that as well.<p>- Owen Cook(Tyler) from RSD<p>This is the perfect model of a man that I wish to be. Driven, charismatic, intelligent, just generally awesome. This is how I want to behave and be like.<p>- Louis CK, Dan Harmon(creator of the shows Community and Rick and Morty) and Randall Munroe(the author of xkcd)<p>I have enormous respect and love for comedy, just something about the way comedians think is incredibly attractive to me. It takes a lot to be as brilliantly creative as these guys, and I want to learn to think like that.<p>Others:<p>Richard Feynman, Kevin Mitnick, Frank Abagnale, Richard Branson - based on their autobiographies, these guys lived cool lives.<p>Elon Musk - I don&#x27;t know what kind of person he is, but based on what he does - he is as cool as it gets.<p>Fictional:<p>- Walter White, Gregory House<p>Brilliant person willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, not giving up in desperate situations, acting rationally despite the emotions.<p>- Barney Stinson<p>Haha this dude is awesome.<p>- Hank Rearden<p>Basically a definition of a badass person, created to be the role model for people like me.<p>- Harry from HPMOR<p>Not much to explain here, he is also basically a definition of a cool person.<p>Others: Harvey Specter, Frank Underwood, Ari Gold, Hank Moody. And Tony Stark I guess =)

Definitely Elon Musk, he&#x27;s a real engineer and we both share the same interests, aviation and electric vehicles

Alan Watts taught me to flow and see,<p>Elon Musk taught me to grow and be,<p>Ayn Rand then helped break the self-illusions, (Ironically!)<p>Will Durant showed the path to break many delusions.

Buckminster Fuller. The epitome of an &quot;outside-the-box&quot; thinker--regardless of how cliché that is nowadays. Reading what he wrote and listening to his talks changed my world-view. He also changed the way I view&#x2F;approach&#x2F;solve problems in my day-to-day work.<p>He&#x27;s also a quotation goldmine:<p>“make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Buckminster_Fuller" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Buckminster_Fuller</a>

Chris Coyier<p>I enamored the man for his work and his experience with developing truly innovative work while still pursuing an active &quot;side project&quot; go-getter-ness via Codepen. But after seeing his appearance on Envato&#x27;s &quot;Made By&quot; series, I could not have chosen a better role model. He is exactly what I want to be in the future. Calm and Collected and revered as an expert in my field.<p>Here is the video for those who are interested:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kRmbVOI6oIM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kRmbVOI6oIM</a>

Linus Torvalds [0]<p>Richard Stallman [1]<p>Linus for Linux; I&#x27;d be lost without that kernel.<p>Richard for GNU; I&#x27;d be lost without GNU GCC and Emacs.<p>Both of them for looking at technology and wanting more, and not being satisfied with the culture that existed at the time.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Linus_Torvalds" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Linus_Torvalds</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Stallman" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Stallman</a>

John Muir, for teaching people how to appreciate and preserve the few precious natural wonders we have left, and how to discover our own spirituality within them.

Joel Spolsky and I haven&#x27;t even read most of his writings. Whatever I have read have appealed to me. Plus he seems like a cool dude.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is pretty cool. I like his transparency. He writes really useful things. His writing about salary negotiation is probably the single most useful thing I&#x27;ve ever read. Lots of other stuff he&#x27;s covered I hope will be relevant to me in the coming years (B2B sales).

Superhans from Peep Show.

I have a huge admiration for people who, with a strong character, pushed the boundaries of their time and invented revolutionary things while no one believed in them and <i>even when some tried to hamper their research</i>. This may apply to most inventors and explorers but for me, personally, Galileo Galilei and Alan Turing stand out.<p>If a &quot;role-model&quot; means what I understand it is (Person who had a role in society that you dream of having), then yes, they are my role-models.

Grace Hopper - I love her personality and admire her career.

Leonardo da Vinci - An independent self learner who was accomplished in art and engineering. I&#x27;d say Renaissance Men in general are pretty high up on my list of admiration. I like the idea of not focusing on one discipline, learning as many ideas and specialties as I can, then combining them in new ways. To always be curious.

George Costanza

From a software development perspective - Brad Fitzpatrick<p>From a business perspective - Elon Musk<p>From a humanities perspective - Gandhi

I admire so many great people but I never forced my self to be like them , I am going in my own way

Napoleon Hill.<p>If you look past the mantras you&#x27;ll see a psychology of selling and the need for connections.<p>Everything you do is selling; the way you look, what you eat, how you communicate and how you work, you are selling yourself to the world hoping to get more back in return.

Fred Rogers (aka Mister Rogers). I watched him on TV occasionally as a child, but it wasn&#x27;t until I was an adult, and started reading about him and watching interviews with him, that I realized what an amazing person he was in real life.

Probably Bill Gates. He was the first person that struck me as wildly successful (this was in the mid 90s). For some reason his success really resonated with me and helped me realize, at an early age, the importance of delayed gratification.

I do not know if it counts as a role model, but I choose to let me inspire on a regular basis by:<p>Seth Godin, Paul Graham, Swiss Miss, James Altuhcer, Rob Walling &amp; Mike Taber &#x2F; Startup For the Rest of us, Zen Founder

My father who works for 18 hours a day and Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam - the Missile Man and Former President of India. I recently met him.

for a long time I would say ive had a hard time answering that question, but at the moment I think I would pick Casey Neistat. His motivation and creativity is an inspiration for me. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;caseyneistat" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;caseyneistat</a>

No role model.<p>I push myself to work as hard as I can and do right by other people. You don&#x27;t need a role model for that.

Rich Hickey teached me how to program. Alan Watts teached me how to live.

I tend to use the good parts of whoever happens to be right in front or right next to me to build my role model.

Bill, from The Bigdil

Richard Branson.

Sheldon Cooper

Richard Feynman.<p>I knew him at Caltech. He tutored me in Quantum Mechanics.<p>A few things I learned from him: you cannot bullshit a good scientist. If you can&#x27;t explain it to an undergraduate you don&#x27;t understand it yourself. Experiment rules - if experiment says it&#x27;s not true then it isn&#x27;t, despite what theory might say - and he was a theoretician!<p>Everyone who knew anything about him revered him as a god because he made it plainly apparent he regarded it as more important to teach Physics than to understand it himself. He must have come to that conclusion late in life, as I recently learned that as a young Cornell professor he was quite irresponsible towards his students.

Wally.