Stiff asks, great programmers answer

Monday, 16 October 2006, in categories: Emacs, Linux, Programming

At some hot, boring afternoon I got an _Idea_. With the help of public accessible e-mail adresses I asked 10 questions to a bunch of programmers that I consider very interesting people and I respect them for variuos things they created. Coming out with question was a 5 minute job for me - these are things I would ask about if I could speak with them personally for, let’s say, 10 minutes, and I didn’t have time for thinking too much. The last two question don’t have anything to do with programming, this is simply something I like to know about everyone I talk to, lets say that’s my hobby. Not everyone wanted to answer them, and that’s fine. It was the first “interview” I ever made, so I also made some mistakes, which went out as people started answering… But despite of this, I learnt a lot of interesting stuff, so it was definietly a valuable experience.

Not everyone responded to my e-mail, not everyone agreed to answer the questions, maybe I will also get some answers after I published this, I didn’t have the patience to wait longer, so new things may appear here over time (Update: Bjarne Stroustrup was added on 03.08.2006).

Finally, here we go:

Starring:

Linus Torvalds - The Linux kernel author

Dave Thomas - Author of the “Pragmmatic Programmer”, “Programming Ruby” and other great books about programming. One can read his mainly programming-related thoughts here.

David Heinemeier Hansson - Author of the Rails Framework - the new hot web development framework. He has a weblog here.

Steve Yegge - Probably the least known from guys here, but also made one of the most interestings answers, has a popular weblog about programming. He is also the author of a game called “Wyvern”.

Peter Norvig - Research Director at Google, a well known Lisper, author of famous (in some circles at least) books about AI. See his homepage.

Guido Van Rossum - The Python language creator

Bjarne Stroustrup - C++ creator, has a homepage here

James Gosling - The Java language creator

Tim Bray - One of the XML and Atom specifications author and a blogger too.

And here comes the main content:

- 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. I’d tried to learn programming a few times before that but never really “got” it. The HP 28c and 48g scientific calculators were pretty powerful and had great docs. I wrote a 3D wireframe viewer for the 48g — I got a book on 3D graphics and painstakingly translated an example program in Pascal into the RPN stack language. It was pretty sweet when I got it running. After that I bought a PC and Turbo Pascal, and started studying programming in earnest. I was a decently good programmer by the time I went into the CS program in college.

I went to the University of Washington and got an undergrad degree in CS. It was definitely worthwhile, and I recommend that all programmers should try to get a CS degree if possible.

Linus Torvalds:

I didn’t learn programming in school, but mostly on my own reading books and just doing it (initially on a Commodore VIC-20, later on a Sinclair QL).

That said, I think especially University was very useful. Rather than go to an engineering school, I went to Helsinki University, which is pretty theoretical, so there the teaching concentrated not so much on programming (which was just a small part, and which I ended up doing more of “on the side” anyway), but most of the courses tended to be on fundamental concepts and things like complexity analysis.

Which can seem boring and even a waste of effort at times, but I think it was useful, and I mostly enjoyed it. And I think I’m probably a better programmer for it.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I learned programming by starting to put together my first web page in HTML. Then I wanted to make some dynamic pieces and picked up first ASP then PHP. After I already knew how to program, I then started on a joint computer science and business administration degree.

Peter Norvig:

I took courses in high school and college, but always felt I learned more on my own.

Dave Thomas:

During my secondary schooling I took a class in a local technical college on computers. It got me totally hooked: I fell in love with programming, and looked around for colleges offering courses in software. Eventually I went to Imperial College, part of London University. It was only the second year they’d offered a course in software, and it was absolutely marvelous: the staff and students worked together to make the materials better, and everyone learned a lot. The undergraduate course there gave me an incredibly strong background in software development. I stayed on to start a PhD, but got lured away by a startup.

But the overall question is “how did you learn programming?” The real answer to that is “I’m still learning programming.” I think any good developer continues to learn throughout their careers. It isn’t just a question of picking up new languages and libraries: good developers also refine their techniques and practices over the years.

Guido Van Rossum:

I went to university where they had a big mainframe and there were various computer courses. This was very important for me.

James Gosling:

Initially, I was self-taught. I got my first programming job before I went to college. But I’m glad I did. I had a lot of fun. I kept going until I had a PhD.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

In university (Aarhus and later Cambridge). The universities taught me much that was useful, incl. most of the bases for my future work. In addition, I learned a fair bit from programming for money - where understanding of real-world problems, correctness, maintainability, on-time delivery, etc. were more pressing than in an educational setting.

Tim Bray:

I thought I was going to be a math teacher. The math program at University required a few computer science courses.

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

Steve Yegge:

Written and verbal communication skills. You’ll never make it very far as a programmer in any field unless you can get your ideas across to people effectively. Programmers should read voraciously, practice writing, take writing courses, and even practice at public speaking.

Linus Torvalds:

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.

But hey, it’s not the only thing. One thing that is very useful, especially in an open source project, is simply the ability to communicate well what you want to do, and how you are going to do it. The ability to explain to others _why_ you do something a certain way is very important, and not everybody has that ability.

That said, in the end there are also the people who just churn out good code. They may not be good at explaining it, and they may not even have great taste, but the code works well. Sometimes you need another person (one that _does_ have that hard-to-define “taste”) to maybe massage the code into a form where it’s useful in the bigger picture, but just the ability to write clear code for difficult problems is obviously a fairly fundamnetal part of any programmer.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

A strong sense of value. The ability to ask yourself the question: Is it worth doing what I’m doing right now? So many programmers seem to waste oceans of time on stuff that just doesn’t matter. And not enough on the stuff that does.

Peter Norvig:

I don’t think there’s one, but let’s say concentration.

Dave Thomas:

Passion.

Guido Van Rossum:

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

James Gosling:

To be self motivated. To be really good, you have to be in love with what you do.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

The ability to think clearly: A programmer has to understand problems and express solutions.

Tim Bray:

Ability to prefer evidence to intuition.

- Do you think mathematics and/or physics are an important skill for a programmer? Why?

Steve Yegge:

There is a large branch of mathematics that’s very important for programmers called “discrete math” or “concrete math”. It includes disciplines such as probability, combinatorics, graph theory, induction proofs, and other useful tools. I would encourage all programmers to study discrete mathematics to whatever extent they can. Even a little is better than none at all.

As for more traditional math, well, I don’t use it as often, but it comes in very handy when I need it. For instance, I’ve only used calculus once in the past year as part of my job. I had to estimate loads for the peak traffic hour of the day for a service whose load “follows the sun” in an approximate sine curve. The simplest way to make the estimate was to integrate over 1/24th of the curve at a specific time. If I hadn’t known calculus, I would not have known how to make a reasonably accurate estimate.

When I was writing my game, Wyvern, having a solid working knowledge of basic planar geometry was incredibly helpful. And it’s quite common to use algebra and linear algebra on a regular basis. But I rarely use trigonometry or differential equations on the job, and not much calculus either.

I’d say my basic math foundation has made me maybe 5% to 10% better as a programmer. If I knew a lot more math, I’d undoubtedly be a much better programmer than I am today, so I study and practice math several hours a week.

I love physics and I have an ongoing, lifelong quest to try to understand the underpinnings of quantum mechanics. But I’ve never personally found any physics very useful towards my job as a programmer. That would, of course, be diffferent if I were doing something in a physics domain, such as 3D game programming, or certain types of simulation.

Linus Torvalds:

I personally think a fairly strong math background is a good thing. I’m not as sure about the physics side, but I’m convinced that understanding math and having a good background in it helps you to be a better programmer. If only because the mental models are similar - you can build up any kind of set of rules you want, but it should be self-consistent.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

Not at all. At least not for the kind of business programming needed for web applications. I consider it much more important that someone is a good writer.

Peter Norvig:

Yes. Many ideas are inherently mathematical: induction, recursion, logic, etc.

Dave Thomas:

Maybe. But, to be honest, I haven’t seen much of a correlation either way between these types of discipline and good software developers.

However, I _have_ seen a strong correlation between people who have some music in their background and programming skills. I have no idea why, but I suspect that some of the areas of the brain that make someone musical also make them good at software development.

Guido Van Rossum:

Math, yes (for some parts; I don’t care for differential equations, but algebra and logic are important). Physics, I don’t think so except it’s always useful to be interested in many different things.

James Gosling:

Yes! They teach you logic & deduction…. To have an analytical eye. And there’s no replacement for mathematics when it comes to analyzing algorithms.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

Depends on the programmer and the programming tasks. Some forms of math are frequently useful; physics less often so, but then learning physics is one of the best ways of learning practical math.

Tim Bray:

In my case, I’ve almost never used my university-level math to support my programming.

- What do you think will be the next big thing in computer programming? X-oriented programming, y language, quantum computers, what?

Steve Yegge:

I think web application programming is gradually going to become the most important client-side programming out there. I think it will mostly obsolete all other client-side toolkits: GTK, Java Swing/SWT, Qt, and of course all the platform-specific ones like Cocoa and Win32/MFC/etc.

It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s very slowly been going that direction for ten years, and it could well be another ten years before web apps “win”. The tools, languages, APIs, protocols, and browser technology will all have to improve far beyond what you can accomplish with them today. But each year they get a little closer, and I’ve finally decided to switch all my own app development over to browser-based programming from now on.

Microsoft and Apple definitely don’t want this to happen, so a necessary first step will be for an open-source browser such as Firefox to achieve a dominant market position, which will in turn require some sort of Firefox-only killer app. (A killer app would be something like iTunes, something that everyone in the world wants to use, badly enough to download Firefox for it.)

Linus Torvalds:

I don’t think we’ll see a “big jump”. We’ve seen a lot of tools to help make all the everyday drudgery easier - with high-level languages and perhaps the integration of simple databases into the language being the main ones. But most of the buzz-words have been of pretty limited use.

For example, I personally believe that “Visual Basic” did more for programming than “Object-Oriented Languages” did. Yet people laugh at VB and say it’s a bad language, and they’ve been talking about OO languages for decades.

And no, Visual Basic wasn’t a great language, but I think the easy DB interfaces in VB were fundmantally more important than object orientation is, for example.

So I think there will be a lot of incremental improvements, and the hardware improvements will make programming easier, but I don’t expect any _huge_ productivity help or revolutions in how people do things.

At least not until you start approaching real AI, and I don’t think real AI is going to be anything you will ever “program”.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I try not to predict the future. I’m not a big believer in fortune telling. The best way to predict the future is to implement it.

Peter Norvig:

Large-scale distributed processing.

Dave Thomas:

The next big thing in computer programming will be eclipsed by the next–next big thing in programming, and so on, and so on. I’m kinda tired of the endless search for the big things, because while doing it people tend to forget about the real issues: getting the fundamentals right. We need to get a whole lot better at talking with our customers, focussing on delivering value, and taking pride in what we do. A developer who can do these things can deliver great software with any tool set, and won’t need to worry about tracking the fads and fashions.

Guido Van Rossum:

Sorry, I’m not much of a crystal ball person. I predicted CGI about 5 years after it had been invented. :-)

James Gosling:

The two issues I’m most concerned about now are coping with parallelism and complexity.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

I don’t know, and I don’t like to guess.

Tim Bray:

No idea.

- If you had three months to learn one relativly new technology, which one would You choose?

Steve Yegge:

I do happen to have 3 months (part-time), and I’m spending it learning Dojo (http://dojotoolkit.org) and advanced AJAX and DHTML. I’m learning it by writing a fairly ambitious web application. Dojo’s really cool, and I’m sure it will only improve with time.

Linus Torvalds:

Hmm. I’d really love to do FPGA’s, but I’ve always been too busy to really sit down and start learning. I love the notion of playing with hardware: it’s obviously one of the reasons I ended up doing operating systems, since that (along with compilers) is about as close as you can get to playing with the hardware, without actually designing or building it yourself.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

Cocoa programming for the Mac.

Peter Norvig:

I’d like to know Javascript better. Also flash.

Dave Thomas:

If “new” means “new to Dave Thomas” then I think I’d take intensive piano lessons.

If “new” means technology stuff, then I guess I’d choose technologies related to accessibility for people with disabilities.

Guido Van Rossum:

Snowboarding.

James Gosling:

For fun, I’d catch up on the latest in 3D rendering. I’d probably write a photon-map renderer.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

There are very few things of any importance that you can learn in three month. I think you must be thinking of training in a well established field.

Tim Bray:

Security, encryption, digital signatures, identity, etc. It’s a big problem for me that I’ve never learned this stuff.

- What do you think makes some programmers 10 or 100 times more productive than others?

Steve Yegge:

I think if you pause to consider why not all atheletes are equally good, you’ll have your answer(s). Thomas Edison has a relevant quote about genius that might also provide you some clues.

Linus Torvalds:

I really have no idea. I think some people are just better able to concentrate on the things that matter, and I think a lot of it is just doing it. Most of the really good programmers I know started doing it fairly young.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

The ability to restate hard problems as easy ones.

Peter Norvig:

The ability to fit the whole problem into their heads at one time.

Dave Thomas:

They care about what they do.

Guido Van Rossum:

Genetic differet brain structure.

James Gosling:

They think about what they do. They don’t rush in and slap things together. They have a holistic picture of what is to be built.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

First a general lack of professionalism and adequate training. that sets the base level too low. Secondly, some people have a combination of “smarts” (ability to think clearly and get to the heart of things), experience, and knowledge of tools. Programming leaves more scope for that because it is a combination of theory and practice - neither of which is much use without domain knowledge.

Tim Bray:

The surprising variability of the human mind.

- 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?

Steve Yegge:

OS: Unix! I use linux, cygwin, and darwin all about equally often now. You just can’t beat it for productivity tools. Every programmer should learn how to use every tool in /bin and /usr/bin.

Scripting language: Ruby. I’m proficient with just about every major scripting language out there: Perl, Python, Tcl, Lua, Awk, Bash, and others I’m forgetting. But I’m really lazy, and Ruby’s by far the easiest, so it’s a match made in heaven.

Programming language: I don’t have a favorite; I think they all suck. I tend to prefer Java because it’s a strong, portable platform with good tools and good libraries. But the Java language will evolve or die; it’s not good enough as-is to hold the lead indefinitely.

Text editor: Emacs, because it’s the best thing out there today.

Version control: SVN. Perforce is better, but it’s very expensive.

Shell: Bash, because I’m too lazy to learn a better one.

Database engine: MySQL, of course. Nothing else comes close.

Others: I find the GIMP invaluable, and also maddeningly unintuitive. I’ve been using it for years and can still barely do anything with it. But I couldn’t live without it, ironically enough.

Firefox is becoming an increasingly critical part of my tools lineup. I feel suffocated when I’m forced to use IE or Safari.

Note that all these tools (Unix, Emacs, Firefox, GIMP, MySQL, Bash, SVN, Perforce) have something in common: they’re extensible; i.e., they all have programming APIs. Great programmers learn how to program their tools, not just use them.

Linus Torvalds:

I actually don’t end up having that many tools I work with, and for the many of them I have spent some time of my own to just make them work for me. The OS part is clearly the biggest one, but I’ve obviously also written my own version control system (git), and the text editor I use (micro-emacs) I’ve ended up customizing and extending upon too.

Other than those three parts, the only thing I care deeply about is my email reader. I use “pine” - not because it’s necessarily the greatest email reader ever, but because I’m used to it, and it does what I need it to do with a minimum of fuzz.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

OS X, TextMate, Ruby, Subversion, MySQL. That’s the combo currently keeping me happy. I like tools that exhibit good taste and a focus on the stuff that matters.

Peter Norvig:

I dislike all three major OS - Windows, Mac, Linux. I like Python and Lisp. Emacs.

Dave Thomas:

I switched to Macs a couple of years ago after being a Linux person for more than 10 years. The tools are not necessarily better, but they don’t have to be sharpened or maintained as often, which lets be concentrate on just using them.

I’m not a great believer in single tools: I tend to switch around quite frequently just so I can get experience with as many tools as possible. Right now I’m using OSX, Emacs, TextMate, Rails, Ruby, SVN, CVS, Rake, make, xsltproc, TeX, MySQL, Postgres, and a whole lot of small productivity aids. Who knows what I’ll be using next year.

Guido Van Rossum:

Unix/Linux, Python, vi+emacs, Firefox.

James Gosling:

These days I live in NetBeans. It does everything I want, very cleanly simply and efficiently. It’s the nicest environment I’ve ever lived in.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

Unix, sam (a very simple text editor), and a good C++ compiler, of course.

Tim Bray:

I like Unix-like operating systems, dynamic languages like Python and Ruby and statically-typed languages like Java (in particular the Java APIs), Emacs, whatever, bash, whatever, NetBeans.

- What is your favourite book related to computer programming?

Steve Yegge:

Man, that’s a tough one. Maybe *Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid *(Hofstadter)? Although it’s not strictly about programming. If you specifically mean “favorite book about programming”, then maybe SICP (mitpress.mit.edu/* sicp*/).

Linus Torvalds:

Heh. When I read these days, I tend to either read fiction, or non-computer-related stuff (oldie but goodie: “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins).

When it comes to programming, the only real programming book that comes to mind is actually the classic Kernighan & Ritchie “The C Programming Language” book, because it’s such an incredibly useful book while being so very readable and _short_. Considering that you can basically learn one of the most important programming languages of our times from it, the fact that it’s thin and readable is just a wonder.

That said, many other books I enjoyed a lot were not about programming per se, but about computer architecture and hardware. There’s obviously Patterson & Hennessy’s computer architecture book, but for me personally perhaps even more Crawford & Gelsinger’s “Programming the 80386″, which was what I used when I started with Linux.

For similar reasons, I have a soft spot for Andrew Tanenbaum’s “Operating Systems: Design and Implementation”.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I like Extreme Programming Explained for its rejection of common thinking about programming practices and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture for striking the right balance of abstract and concrete.

Peter Norvig:

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Dave Thomas:

It depends on what you mean by “favorite.” Probably the best written book I’ve read in the area is IBM’s “IBM/360 Principles of Operation.”

Guido Van Rossum:

Neil Stephenson’s Quicksilver.

James Gosling:

Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley.

Bjarne Stroustrup:

K&R.

Tim Bray:

Bentley’s Programming Pearls

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

Steve Yegge:

Just one book? You’re asking for the impossible. There are too many great books out there to choose just one.

My favorite books that I’ve read this month are “Stardust” (Neil Gaiman) and “The Mind’s I” (Hofstadter/Dennet).

My favorite writers are Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Jack Vance.

Linus Torvalds:

Well, I already mentioned the Selfish Gene by Dawkins. On the fictional side, there’s just a lot of books I’ve read and anjoyed, but few I’d say were my “favourite” one. I tend to not often re-read the books, and the selection would change over time. It’s mostly science fiction and fantasy, eg “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Heinlein was my favourite one as a teenager, but it’s a bit less clear-cut for me these days..

David Heinemeier Hansson:

1984, George Orwell.

Guido Van Rossum:

Neil Stephenson’s Quicksilver.

James Gosling:

Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond

Bjarne Stroustrup:

It changes over time. Currently O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. See also http://www.research.att.com/~bs/literature.html.

Tim Bray:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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

Steve Yegge:

Favorite genres: classical, anime soundtracks, video-game music
Favorite composers: Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Bach
Favorite performers: David Russell (classical guitar), Sviatoslav Richter
(piano)
Favorite anime OSTs: Last Exile, Haibane Renmei

Linus Torvalds:

I’m actually not very much into music, but when I listen to it, I tend to listen to various classic-rockish things, ranging from Pink Floyd to the Beatles to Queen and The Who.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I like a lot of genres. Beth Orton, Aimee Mann, Jewel, Lauryn Hill. Actually, all those examples would fit under Girls with Guitars ;).

Guido Van Rossum:

Philip Glass.

James Gosling:

I tend to like folk musicians: Christine Lavin, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger…

Bjarne Stroustrup:

Band: The Dixie Chicks. Composer: Beethoven.

Tim Bray:

Read my blog.

[ Comments not in english will be deleted, thanks for Martinez for helping correcting my poor english ]

Comments ():

Magnus, 23 July 2006, 8:07 am

Good questions and great answers! Thanks fo doing this.

maru, 23 July 2006, 2:07 pm

“Steve Yegge:
Favorite anime OSTs: Last Exile, Haibane Renmei”

Yay! Excellent taste, Steve. Last Exile (especially) and Haibane Renmei have some of the best OSTs out there, up there with great ones like FLCL or Ghost in the Shell or Cowboy Bebop.

(But boo on Tim Bray. I’m already reading a blog, I don’t want to hunt down a new one, and then hunt down within that one your musical tastes. That question didn’t require a very long answer.)

Peter Cooper, 23 July 2006, 4:07 pm

I can’t believe you got all these answers.. well done!

gaschj, 23 July 2006, 5:07 pm

Sir,
I have a question for you: Is english becomming the language of interaction among those working in information technology?
Jim

Julio Nobrega, 23 July 2006, 5:07 pm

Are these real? :)

Thanks for the awesome post.

NC, 23 July 2006, 5:07 pm

That was an excellent interview….

:)

Ben, 23 July 2006, 6:07 pm

Good interview. That’s a pretty good list of books I might look into.

“Linus Torvalds:

I’m actually not very much into music, but when I listen to it, I tend to listen to various classic-rockish things, ranging from Pink Floyd to the Beatles to Queen and The Who.”

Linus Torvalds is the man!

fad, 23 July 2006, 6:07 pm

That’s just awesome. I can’t believe no one before had this idea. I will bookmark this and study it excessively later´.

fdfd, 23 July 2006, 7:07 pm

Wow, this is a great interview. Is it real?

kk, 23 July 2006, 7:07 pm

Wonderful, Thanks.

sztywny, 23 July 2006, 7:07 pm

Of course it’s real, ask Linus ;)

Ahramd Thorasine, 23 July 2006, 8:07 pm

Why didn’t any of these people discuss the “metaverse”?

Linus, 23 July 2006, 10:07 pm

Of course its real
Linus

Vinny Carpenter’s blog · Daily del.icio.us for Jul 23, 2006, 24 July 2006, 12:07 am

[...] explicitly clear the value in a finally bl (tags: java howto article thread threadlocal) Sztywny Blog - Stiff asks, great programmers answer I asked 1 [...]

Vinny Carpenter’s Link blog » Blog Archive » links for 2006-07-23, 24 July 2006, 12:07 am

[...] explicitly clear the value in a finally bl (tags: java howto article thread threadlocal) Sztywny Blog - Stiff asks, great programmers answer I asked 1 [...]

Carnal Reason, 24 July 2006, 3:07 am

» programming all-stars
[...] are at all into programming, you may want to check this out. stifflog2 has an interesting interview with some big names in the software world: Linus T [...]

Anonymous, 24 July 2006, 5:07 am

Guido’s a moron.

Ravi Shakya, 24 July 2006, 5:07 am

Great Read..interesting

Syntactically Correct - Amit Schreiber’s Blog » Blog Archive » Great interview with great programmers, 24 July 2006, 6:07 am

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Great interview with great programmers

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Clark, 24 July 2006, 6:07 am

“Is english becomming the language of interaction among those working in information technology?”

yes, and it has been; according to Linus himself- “through Linux, I’ve been communicating professionally exclusively in English for the last ten years. In fact my English is stronger than my Finnish…”
http://www.enrus.ru/english/public_5.html

David, 24 July 2006, 6:07 am

If you say all comments need to be in English, why don’t you use English for your dates/categories/months/etc here on the blog. There’s nothing wrong with Polish, of course, but since you want all comments in English…

BTW, Great interview, you should do more of them!

Christoph Wagner, 24 July 2006, 7:07 am

“Stardust” - Neil Gaiman

Wow, while everything was interesting, that was the most useful information for me;)
I love Gaiman!

sztywny, 24 July 2006, 7:07 am

Before the interview this was a completely Polish weblog, so most page elements are in Polish, I didn’t yet decided what I will do with this. I want only comments in English here, because there is a separete entry with the interview translated to Polish, where my Polish folks can comment…

stuffonfire.com» Blog Archive, 24 July 2006, 7:07 am

» Wisdom
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Rohan Dhruva, 24 July 2006, 7:07 am

GREAT INTERVIEW(s). Keep it up !! And i just loved Guido’s answer -

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

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[...] guage creator Tim Bray - One of the XML and Atom specifications author and a blogger too. Link (via reddit) This entry was po [...]

Hiten Parmar, 24 July 2006, 9:07 am

awesome interview! most interesting is the bit -

Steve Yegge: Great programmers learn how to program their tools, not just use them.

and just below…is Linus saying…

Linus: but I’ve obviously also written my own version control system (git), and the text editor I use (micro-emacs) I’ve ended up customizing and extending upon too

which confirms Linus really is the _man_ !

Pity that Bill G didn’t figure in your list :-(

e, 24 July 2006, 10:07 am

The concise answers from Guido provide the clear truth to why Python is king.

period.

Look at the rest of the utter gibberish. Learning to program from a classroom? Give me a break. This is second generation nonsense.

e.

Anonymous, 24 July 2006, 10:07 am

Norvig needs to get off his high chair and talk more. Not impressed.

Gravis, 24 July 2006, 11:07 am

I find the GIMP invaluable, and also maddeningly unintuitive. I’ve been using it for years and can still barely do anything with it. - Steve Yegge

it’s sooooooo true.

Charlie, 24 July 2006, 11:07 am

Ha!Linus wrote a lot for the questions….

niyue, 24 July 2006, 1:07 pm

Great post, I’m looking foward to the rest

Mental notes to myself » Blog Archive » Great Programmers Answer, 24 July 2006, 2:07 pm

[...] author and a blogger too. Read the rest of the interview from here: StiffLog Recent Entries Great Programmers Answer [...]

Janson, 24 July 2006, 3:07 pm

Programming Pearls = Must read

Alexander Chard, 24 July 2006, 4:07 pm

Top, top article. well done!

fdfd, 24 July 2006, 5:07 pm

What’s up with Peter Norwig with all those shitty answers?

InfoHatter Blog! :: Answers from the Great Programmers, 24 July 2006, 5:07 pm

[...] 2006 07 24 }
Answers from the Great Programmers

I was just recently reading [...]

Mis choremas » Preguntas a programadores famosos, 24 July 2006, 8:07 pm

[...] a el propio perpetrador quien haga toda la presentación en su propio blog, en la entrada: Stiff asks, great programmers answer

No [...]

Hugo, 24 July 2006, 8:07 pm

This was a great read! Thanks for publishing it.

Joe, 24 July 2006, 8:07 pm

Steve Yegge is an ignoramus. “Nothing comes close to MySQL?” Get a fucking clue…

I can’t believe DHH likes such lame music.

Joe, 24 July 2006, 8:07 pm

fdfd - Peter Norvig is an intellectually dishonest dickhead.

Carlitos, 24 July 2006, 10:07 pm

If this thing is not real you’re very smart and at least made me think and laugh a lot! Thank you anyway!

The funniest quote: “Initially, I was self-taught. I got my first programming job before I went to college. But I’m glad I did. I had a lot of fun. I kept going until I had a PhD.”

John, 24 July 2006, 11:07 pm

Guido Van Rossum
Plillip Glass is great, Naqoquatsi and the series is unbelieveable.

Technical Related Notes » Blog Archive » links for 2006-07-25, 25 July 2006, 4:07 am

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jawe.net » Blog Archiv » Links vom Montag, 24. Juli 2006, 25 July 2006, 8:07 am

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Stiff asks., 25 July 2006, 10:07 am

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美味饭 - links for 2006-07-25, 25 July 2006, 4:07 pm

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用电子邮件采访伟大的程序员–独乐乐不如众乐乐–娱己后娱人–MjjDic.com, 25 July 2006, 7:07 pm

[...] 。而电子邮件的方式最大限度的释放了个人空间给你，使你放轻松。 [...]

ALR, 25 July 2006, 8:07 pm

Thanks a lot to the people who took time out of their busy lives to answer some questions. I greatly enjoyed reading through them and was surprised by a few of the answers. Thanks again!

David G. Hong» Blog Archive » Ten questions answered. By programming greats., 26 July 2006, 1:07 am

[...] ink about programming, or what tools they use everyday - then head over to stifflog for more. Tags: Steve Yegge, Lnux Torvalds, Guido [...]

Rubyists in Pune » Stiff Asks, Great Programmers Answer, 26 July 2006, 3:07 am

[...] 2006 at 7:32 am · Filed under General I came across this interesting blog entry where the blog author asked some [...]

Dude, 26 July 2006, 8:07 am

What? No questions about their sex lives? ;)

# rm -rf / » Blog Archive » 有意思的问答, 26 July 2006, 8:07 am

[...] ��相似的观点，对另一些则有完全不同的答案，看下来蛮有意思的。 Sztywny Blog - Stiff asks, great programmers answer

[...]

shana, 26 July 2006, 9:07 am

Maybe you can become an excellent journalist.

cid73, 26 July 2006, 11:07 am

Hello, I’ve translated it into Chinese, 中文版 http://club.phpe.net/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=13863&s=

Michael, 26 July 2006, 4:07 pm

“For example, I personally believe that „Visual Basic” did more for programming than „Object-Oriented Languages” did.” - Linus Torvalds

**** Linus Torvalds…. I’m a linux fan, but that’s just crap.

chaos » 伟大的程序员这样回答……, 26 July 2006, 7:07 pm

[...] �Stiff的问题， 其结果就是我们可以看到的——一次相当有趣而成功的采访！”
归类于： software — chaos @ [...]

David, 26 July 2006, 11:07 pm

@sztywny You’re right. I only read this post so I didn’t realise the entire site was in Polish. My bad. Keep up the good work man.

Here’s another idea, how about making it bilingual?

sztywny, 27 July 2006, 6:07 am

After this entry generated more visits in two days than I’ve had in previous three months I’m seriously considering it, Daivd :D I just need to improve my English skills a bit first…

lulin » Stiff asks, great programmers answer, 27 July 2006, 2:07 pm

[...] 27.06 Stiff asks, great programmers answer 张贴于 未分类 于 9:27 pm 由 lulin
http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-programmers-answers/
固定链接 � [...]

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Running Sandwitch » links for 2006-07-25, 27 July 2006, 3:07 pm

[...] ves

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Radio Levhita » Archivo » “Visual Basic” did more for programming than “Object-Oriented Languages” did, 27 July 2006, 7:07 pm

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سردال » من هنا وهناك, 28 July 2006, 2:07 pm

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onehero / Sundries 20060729, 29 July 2006, 10:07 am

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Torvalds on VB » Wagalulu - Microsoft » » Torvalds on VB, 29 July 2006, 3:07 pm

[...] kmark on del.icio.us I know you expect this to be Linus slamming VB - but look what he had to say Linus Torvalds wrote:For e [...]

Tim Ng : The impact of VB, 29 July 2006, 9:07 pm

[...] in which Linus Torvalds says that “VB has done more for programming languages then OOP” - http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-pr [...]

The impact of VB » Wagalulu - Microsoft » » The impact of VB, 29 July 2006, 9:07 pm

[...] nus Torvalds says that “VB has done more for programming languages then OOP” - http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/sti [...]

Pedro Fonceca, 30 July 2006, 1:07 am

Buena Entrevista !

La voy a traducir al español

depi, 30 July 2006, 8:07 am

Good job man!

Plain Old Programming » Blog Archive » Linus about Visual Basic, 30 July 2006, 10:07 pm

[...] ally more important than object orientation is, for example.” — Linus Torvalds http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-pr [...]

foobarspam » Blog Archive » 8 interviews pour le prix d’un, 31 July 2006, 2:07 am

[...] 8 interviews pour le prix d’un Ajourd’hui, j’ai découvert 8 interviews pour le prix d’un, via reddit. En effet, l [...]

Rue Plumet » Interesting Sites For This Week, 31 July 2006, 4:07 am

[...] ). GreatNews - The Intelligent RSS Reader Tagged as: rss windows [...]

Vassilis Aggelakos : Stiff asks, great programmers answer, 1 August 2006, 10:08 am

[...]
Stiff asks, great programmers answer
Really interesting post. Worth reading… here
(Via Jeff A [...]

Dutch Rapley, 1 August 2006, 8:08 pm

Thanks for taking the time to come up with the questions and organizing the answers. Those are mostly the same questions I would probaby ask. As a personal preference, I tended to like the answers from James Gosling and Dave Thomas the best as I found them more insightful, but they were all great answers from everyone else too!

durrow.com » Music and Programming, 1 August 2006, 11:08 pm

[...] g answer considering I went to University for Music. You can read the rest of the Q&A here.

Permalink

[...]

anjan bacchu, 1 August 2006, 11:08 pm

hi there,

nice job. I’m glad that you got all the replies. More so that you posted ‘em.

Tim Bray : -1 on your music reply. I tried searching for music on his site and got more than 300 entries in the response
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=music&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google%2BSearch&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=tbray.org

the reason that Joel Spolsky keeps trashing java was lost on me. But his latest post and the fact that Steve and Peter both emphasize on
SICP (mitpress.mit.edu/* sicp*/) which uses LISP makes things clearer now!

It would be nice to ask the same questions to guys like Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Anders Hejlberg — I understand that these guys don’t have a popular blog. Do any of the readers here have any interest in these guys ?

BR,
~A

?, 2 August 2006, 12:08 am

i smell quzzila.com

panzi, 2 August 2006, 12:08 am

@OST:
The Last Exile OST is a very good soundtrack. But I think a similar but much better soundtrack is (the new) Battlestar Galactica OST! Mini-Sieries and Season 1. (I don’t have teh OST of Season 2. Is it out yet?)

Futher (partially) superb sountracks are: Schlafes Bruder, Vanilla Sky, The Fifth Element, Orlando, Great Expectations and the title theme of Conan: The Riddle of Steel (it’s used in a Zelda comercial. I know it from there). Some of these movies are good, too. But othrs aren’t.

And game sountracks:
In my opinion Chrono Trigger and Zelda (Ocarina of Time) have very good soundtracks. The remixes of thouse are great, too: http://ocremix.org

@Other music:
“Queen and The Who”
Yes they are great. I also like New Model Army, The Dresden Dolls, The White Stripes, Tori Amos, Björk, The Smiths (and Morrisey) and a bit Violent Femmes, Green Day, U2, Led Zepplin etc.

Sorry if thats a bit off topic. :)

Anonymous, 2 August 2006, 2:08 am

Excellent idea. We can learn lot of good stuff from these great programmers. I did already.

the brook » How great minds really think, 2 August 2006, 4:08 am

[...] ea of e-mailing a few great programmers and asking questions related to coding. He’s posted the answers, and they’re definitely worth a read [...]

Hecgo.com » Blog Archive » Stiff asks, great programmers answer, 2 August 2006, 5:08 am

[...] los autores de las especificaciones de XML y ATOM), etc. Para leer la entrevista haz clic aquí. This entry [...]

Softwaremaker : Think and Reflect broadly before you pooh-pooh, 2 August 2006, 5:08 am

[...] uld answer a number of questions about what it takes to become a great programmer. He then blogged the answers.
Linus, said this in his a [...]

halukag, 2 August 2006, 12:08 pm

For the commentator__>> Guido’s a moron >>
Guido Van Rossum created the language more then a decade ago that is now being used by the Google & NASA engineers, besides everyone else, and also influenced the creation of Ruby. Calling him a moron does nothing but prove your level of intelligence…

Otherwise, great interview and thanks a lot for sharing it with everyone…

Alex, 2 August 2006, 2:08 pm

Wow! It seems Ruby and Emacs are da thing to learn. Yeah. Thanks!

Paul, 2 August 2006, 2:08 pm

good interviews, well done mate.

but only one bit of it made me laugh out loud……Linus still using pine…..jezzzzzzzz :-))

Externspeicher » 10 Fragen an berühmte Programmierer, 2 August 2006, 3:08 pm

[...] gefragt, wie sie programmieren gelernt haben, welche Fähigkeiten sie für wichtig halten, und vieles mehr. Link Trackback [...]

Anonymous, 2 August 2006, 4:08 pm

I like Guido. Nice, sarcastic european humor! :-)

mi, 2 August 2006, 4:08 pm

different brain strucure. Wow… who owns that ? :)

jozeluiz » Blog Archive » Entrevista informal a algunos importantes programadores, 2 August 2006, 5:08 pm

[...] Entrevista informal a algunos importantes programadores He leido un post muy interesante en el que importantes programadores resp [...]

spacial, 2 August 2006, 6:08 pm

nice interview, great work

Talking Out Of Turn » Stiff asks programmers questions, 2 August 2006, 6:08 pm

[...] White debate DVDs available

Stiff asks programmers questions

Stiff asks great programmers some pretty interesting questions [...]

Pomme::TAB » Blog Archive » Stiff’s Questions, 2 August 2006, 8:08 pm

[...] David Heinemeier Hansson, Steve Yegge, Peter Norvig, Guido van Rossum, and James Gosling. The answers to his questions are interesting. “ (Via o [...]

Chrono’s Linkdump » Blog Archive » Stiff asks, great programmers answer, 2 August 2006, 10:08 pm

[...] Future of MySQL Replication Stiff asks, great programmers answer Sztywny Blog - Stiff asks, great programmers answer With [...]

László Monda’s Blog » Blog Archive, 2 August 2006, 10:08 pm

» Memo
[...] Cause, Not a Just War Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel by Greg Kroah-Hartman [...]

Patrick_, 2 August 2006, 11:08 pm

Thanks for asking these great questions! I myself have always wanted to ask them. Looking forward to others…

Craig Gardner » Schooled, 3 August 2006, 5:08 am

[...] titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-programmers-answers/’);” title=”Sztywny Blog” href=”http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-programmers-answers/”>blog the other day and it got me to thinking that I really wa [...]

Michel Leblanc, M.Sc. commerce électronique. Marketing Internet, consultant et conférencier » Les nouvelles qui ont retenu mon attention dernièrement…, 3 August 2006, 7:08 am

[...] #8217;applications Web D’excellents ajouts pour Firefox Comment devient-on programmeur? Une minorité de blog [...]

Connelly Barnes, 3 August 2006, 8:08 am

What, none of the great hackers mentioned Microsoft .NET? Haha, just joking. Thanks for the cool interview. James Gosling sure stuck out: Emacs, Emacs, Emacs, Emacs, NetBeans!, Emacs… I’m surprised that any of these hackers first learned programming in school. And some of them read nonfiction books too. Sort of tones down my image of the stereotypical hacker. But not by much.

Alessandro, 3 August 2006, 8:08 am

great idea!

IMHO you miss Rob Pike http://labs.google.com/people/r/
a true innovator ( http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/ , http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/plumb.html , http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf ), co-author of the very recommended “The Practice Of Programming” ( http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThePracticeOfProgramming ).

here it is a list for a next round of interviews:
http://java.sys-con.com/read/47349.htm

sztywny, 3 August 2006, 9:08 am

Alessandro - from the java.sys-con.com list I e-mailed Martin Fowler (he responded he hasn’t got enough time) and Roy Fielding (didn’t respond at all). There is a lot of people there I actually forgotten…

Well, Alan Turing would be certainly worth interviewing…

Btw, I got an answer from Bjarne Stroustrup recently, just added it here…

EveryDigg » Blog Archive » Stiff asks, great programmers answer, 3 August 2006, 7:08 pm

[...] n, Steve Yegge, Peter Norvig, Guido Van Rossum, James Gosling and Tim Bray. read more | digg story Th [...]

Glorf.It - Bedenkliches aus dem IT-Alltag » bekannte Entwickler antworten, 3 August 2006, 8:08 pm

[...] immer an Kpt. Hook denken, sorry) fand ich einen den Link auf den interessanten Artikel im Sztywny Blog “Stiff asks, great programmers answer” [...]

weekly linkdump « блог разработчиков « developers.org.ua, 4 August 2006, 6:08 am

[...] Серпень 4th, 2006 by Max Опубліковано в: Linkdump Stiff asks, great programmers answer – известн [...]

Max Ischenko’ blog » Blog Archive » 1 top reason to blog for a programmer, 4 August 2006, 11:08 am

[...] everyone should do it. I find this one the most compelling, said by Steve Yegge in recent interview: What do you think is the most important skill ev [...]

whatever, 4 August 2006, 2:08 pm

That Guido boy really comes up as a great schmuck…

Alessandro, 5 August 2006, 1:08 pm

may I suggest you to ask Joel Spolsky too? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
He was in the MS Excel team, a team that write their own C compiler!
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.joelonsoftware.com%2Farticles%2Ffog0000000007.html

sztywny, 5 August 2006, 4:08 pm

I e-mailed Joel AFAIR, but he didn’t respond.

Alessandro, 6 August 2006, 9:08 am

Ok Stiff, I suggest you another guy: Alex Martelli, a Pythonian:
http://www.aleax.it/
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/918

Subject Code » links for 2006-07-25, 6 August 2006, 12:08 pm

[...] r 2006-07-22
links for 2006-07-26 »

links for 2006-07-25

Stiff asks, great programmers answer (tags: programming cultu [...]

|► Interviste, Google, Blog Conference, WMrkt - News del 06 agosto, 6 August 2006, 3:08 pm

[...] erviste, Google, Blog Conference, WMrkt - News del 06 agosto

Un’intervista ad alcuni migliori programmatori al [...]

SammyRulez Blog » Blog Archive » Domande difficili, i grandi programmatori rispondono, 7 August 2006, 9:08 am

[...] rammatori rispondono Interessante serie di interviste trovate su http://sztywny.titaniumhosting.com/2006/07/23/stiff-asks-great-pr [...]

The Random Musings » Blog Archive » High Profile Programmers Respond to Insightful Questions, 7 August 2006, 4:08 pm

[...] rmers/compositors?”. It was a great post and interview and well worth a read. “Stiff asks great programmers answer” Technorati [...]

LT People » Blog Archive » Интервью с великими программистами, 7 August 2006, 8:08 pm

[...] �раях Стив Йегги). Ответы великих можно почитать в блоге Ярослава. This e [...]

Crónicas de Zeitan :: Linux Loves VB :: August :: 2006, 8 August 2006, 1:08 pm

[...] nológica. La intro anterior la hago debido a que me en una entrevista/cuestionario que un blogger hizo a un grupo de respetables progra [...]

Bob, 8 August 2006, 3:08 pm

Wonder which distro Linus uses?

tte, 8 August 2006, 8:08 pm

>>I think it will mostly obsolete all other client-side toolkits: GTK, Java >>Swing/SWT, Qt, and of course all the platform-specific ones like >>Cocoa and Win32/MFC/etc

rotf, stfu

erwin, 9 August 2006, 6:08 am

Great questions with great answers from great people.

Phlash, 9 August 2006, 5:08 pm

Superb idea Stiff, you’ve made my day!

You might like to know that the latest Verity Stob column in The Register (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/08/08/cplusplus_loops/) mentions Linus and links to this blog page, so expect a few more hits…

I was surprised by some of the answers, while others seem to show a pattern that reflects the age of the responder - especially those Emacs addicts :)

digitazero.org » Blog Archive » domande difficili, i grandi programmatori rispondono, 10 August 2006, 8:08 pm

[...] elle specifiche dell’ XML ed Atom. L’intera intervista � disponibile a questo indirizzo. Pubblicato in data [...]

Linux Platense » Linus Torvalds, fan de Visual Basic, 11 August 2006, 6:08 pm

[...] 11
08
2006

Desde el sitio de Stiff enviaron una entrevista con 10 preguntas sobre programación a un grupo de [...]

Interview of Famous Programmers at mahalie.com, 11 August 2006, 8:08 pm

[...] h, 2006 in geek, inspiration, personal. Stiff of StiffLog2, a generally Linux-flavored web programming blog, c [...]

software guy, 12 August 2006, 5:08 am

Good interview. It was worth the read and you did a great job with the questions.

GF, 12 August 2006, 5:08 am

Somewhere up above, Connelly Barnes writes:

[...]James Gosling sure stuck out: Emacs, Emacs, Emacs, Emacs, NetBeans!, Emacs…[...]

Maybe it should be pointed out that Gosling wrote the first version of EMACs to run under Unix back in 1981. Richard Stallman used parts of his code when he came up with the first version of GNU Emacs.

So maybe Goslings answer was different because he’s thinking of other things these days.

大可TeRRy的博客 :) » 不一样还是不一样, 12 August 2006, 4:08 pm

[...] �“人性化”，有他们普通人的一面，有兴趣的朋友，可以一读，全文按此。 Comments» no comments yet - be the fir [...]

Tecno4all, 13 August 2006, 7:08 am

Rumores de Linus y Visual Basic

Hay corriendo por el web una noticia basada en un comentario de Linus torvalds que sacado de su contexto parece decir: A Linus le gusta Visual Basic.
Esto fue lo que dijo Linus:
For example, I personally believe that „Visual Basic” did more for progr…

Patrick Chan, 15 August 2006, 1:08 am

Just wondering if you’ll expand the list at some point — for e.g., perhaps ask Jamie Zawinski or Larry Wall or RMS? (Of course, assuming you haven’t already asked them and they just did not respond.)

不一样还是不一样, 20 August 2006, 4:08 pm

[...] �“人性化”，有他们普通人的一面，有兴趣的朋友，可以一读，全文按此。 Leave a comment, View co [...]

keith, 31 August 2006, 1:08 pm

Great article! Very interesting and insightful.

I did think someone might have mentioned The Mythical Man Month as a computer related book though.

DOAN CHIEN THANG » Hãy nghe chuyên gia nói…, 7 September 2006, 6:09 pm

[...] đáng để bạn suy ngẫm… (xem bản gốc tiếng Anh từ blog của Sztywny tại đây) Vào cái buổi chiều oi [...]

Pinging Knight, 15 September 2006, 9:09 am

[...] o become a monstrosity that threatens culture and creativity. Includes slides and audio. Stiff asks, great programmers answer. A blogger gets the ide [...]

’Twas Brillig* » Blog Archive » 10 Questions to Great Programmers, 20 September 2006, 9:09 am

[...] « Manifesto Games 10 Questions to Great Programmers Stiff has a is really good interview by email with some of th [...]

In which, I bang my head on the keyboard and eat my own shoes. « To us, here and now, it appears thus, 23 September 2006, 6:09 pm

[...] ing my head on the keyboard and probably feel like eating my own shoes too.. Check out the replies they have given ( [...]

http://aqduhk99.com, 1 October 2006, 5:10 am

http://aqduhk10.com aqduhk11 aqduhk12 [URL='http://aqduhk13.com' ]aqduhk13[/URL] aqduhk14 [URL=http://aqduhk15.com ]aqduhk15[/URL]

Widen Collective Blog » “Great programmers answer”, 4 October 2006, 3:10 pm

[...] ammers answer” Filed under: Programming — uriah @ 9:15 am I ran across this interesting blog posting a few days ago. Some guy (̶ [...]

Stephan, 9 October 2006, 12:10 pm

Thank you Steve! Fantastic!

LOROVSKII ANONIZMUS, 10 October 2006, 2:10 pm

All these people, бля, are great mans!
And I found that most important programming skill is individualityнах!

Wade, 10 October 2006, 2:10 pm

Thanks - an excellent read.

probert100, 10 October 2006, 2:10 pm

Very good interview.
Thanks for doing this.

Pozdrawia Robert

Way of the Geek - Your One Stop Geek Shop » Questions for the Greats, 10 October 2006, 3:10 pm

[...] jarne Stroustrup, the author of the C++ language, he asked each of them five questions and posted their answers on his blog. Though the first questions [...]

lalala, 10 October 2006, 3:10 pm

You forgot Larry Wall and Richard Stallman, two of the most important hackers of all time.

Dude, 10 October 2006, 3:10 pm

Thanks for posting this! Definitely a great idea and pretty well executed. Keep ‘em coming, btw. ;)

Programmers Q&A, 10 October 2006, 4:10 pm

[...] t Programmers Q&A Posted by Markus Kolb Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:57:00 GMT Just found some questions about programming and computer science w [...]

Zhe’s Blog » Great Programmers Answer Questions From Aspiring Student, 10 October 2006, 4:10 pm

[...] o the programmers he admired the most who also, it turns out, happen to be some of the most influential computer scientists and programmers of the last [...]

ud, 10 October 2006, 4:10 pm

Awesome Interview. It made my day. I was looking for these kinda information in order to get inspired as well as know which direction should I head. It was clever of you to come up with the idea of interviewing them.

Cool!!! ;-)

Prominentes programadores responden « Fred.cpp y sus cosas, 10 October 2006, 5:10 pm

[...] id Heinemeier Hansson (Rails Framework), y los Googleros Steve Yegge and Peter Norvig. Las respuestas son interesantes, en especial para los que nos gus [...]

fragles, 10 October 2006, 7:10 pm

Great job!!! Will you include more interviews in the future? Are you planning to write a book?

Michael, 10 October 2006, 7:10 pm

Great questions and answers (in most cases). Glad you took the time to query them and post the results.

Some great programmers! « Entertaining Research, 10 October 2006, 7:10 pm

[...] « Balanced and fair! Some great programmers! Some great programmers answer questions from aspiring students [...]

Phil Newton, 10 October 2006, 8:10 pm

Excellent interviews, and some insightful answers. Thanks for sharing them!

Paul, 10 October 2006, 8:10 pm

Did you forget about Richard Stallman?

blsonne, 10 October 2006, 8:10 pm

Dude, your English was fine! Nothing to worry about, and anyone that bugs you about should shut up and try to speak to you in *your* language, and then see how well they do :)

Sjan Evardsson - stuff that w0rks, 10 October 2006, 8:10 pm

http://www.evardsson.com/top/development/interviews.html
Interview with some of the biggest

While there are a good deal of serious answers about tools, platforms, methods, skills and so forth, the gem that made me chuckle was the response from Guido Van Rossum to the question “What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?”:

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Tomasz Kłosiński, alienjr, 11 October 2006, 12:10 am

Drogi Jarku!
Great job!
This is really awesome.
I’d never expect that they read something else than technology stuff or even listen to music. ;-P

I hope you don’t rest on one’s laurels and you prepare another interviews.

Cheers,
alienjr

PS. Sorry for my bad english.

C. Rebert, 11 October 2006, 2:10 am

“If you had three months to learn one relatively new technology, which one would You choose?”
GvR: Snowboarding

Oh God that’s so funny in a surreal / programmer humor sort of way. :-)

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Rob W., 11 October 2006, 5:10 am

It takes someone of the same level of intelligence in order to understand another person’s wit or sarcasm. For those insulting Guido, obviously you aren’t smart enough to understand his sense of humor. He’s not stupid by any means, but he *is* trying not to take himself too seriously. Humility is an important trait for any programmer, because without it, you’ll never be able to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Without having the maturity to do that, you never improve. (But of course arrogant programmers are a rarity, right?)

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joey, 11 October 2006, 7:10 am

Great questions, amazing responses… Most entertaining/enlightening blog post in recent memory… THANKS!

Anonymous, 11 October 2006, 7:10 am

I think that your warning about ” Comments not in english..” its an attempt to the principles of liberty of expression in the internet and its not a political correct form of being. It’s just my opinion. Iknow that you may want to everybody understands what in the blog is said it, but I think it’s not relevant.

Thanks..

joey, 11 October 2006, 8:10 am

Did everyone you emailed reply?

Any chance you might try and get Larry Wall and the Woz to answer these questions?

…. and maybe bill gates while you’re at it..

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Anonymous, 11 October 2006, 8:10 am

Guido shouldn’t have even bothered to respond; what a load of rubbish. Anyone can give smartass responses to questions and I’m glad that most of the others made good use of their time (and mine).

Dima, 11 October 2006, 8:10 am

Cool !!!

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rjs, 11 October 2006, 9:10 am

Python never looked very exciting to me, but based purely on guido’s general coolness in that interview i’m gonna go check it out. Guido rocks.

-rjs.

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Vladimir Savenkov, 11 October 2006, 10:10 am

It was very interesting! Thank you for your interview

Gennady Lyakhovetsky, 11 October 2006, 11:10 am

I am missing Larry Wall (Perl)… Apart from that - nice interview

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Valeriy, 11 October 2006, 12:10 pm

Wow! Author and “Great programmers” thank You very much!
I want to make an emphasis on few moments I completely agreed
Dave Thomas:
… The real answer to that is „I’m still learning programming.” I think any good developer continues to learn throughout their careers…
James Gosling:
To be self motivated…
I understand the following Linus Torvalds idea: “… I personally believe that „Visual Basic” did more for programming than „Object-Oriented Languages” did…” - in sence that only simple (relatively) things can made fundamental changes.

colabus, 11 October 2006, 12:10 pm

Very interesting read, great to hear what the industry experts think on the industry.

Thanks!

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me, 11 October 2006, 7:10 pm

It would be good if u can ask also the creator of Perl - Larry Wall (his email is : larry_at_wall.org)

thanx

sztywny, 11 October 2006, 8:10 pm

1. I emailed Larry Wall but he didn’t respond.

2. One person that answers I would really really like to see is Donald Knuth (as many other people judging from some of the comments), but one needs to write to him by postal email and wait six months for the answers like you can read on his webpage.

Timmy Jose, 12 October 2006, 9:10 am

Hey, good interview! I liked Steve, Linus and Stroustrup’s interviews best. Guido Van Rossum was particularly terse… must be his style :-) … music wise, I liked Linus best. The others are non-impressive. And I would like to thank Steve for his excellent recommendation of the book “SICP”.

Watsh Rajneesh, 12 October 2006, 9:10 am

Very good work and thanks alot for posting this article. Its good to know what the big guys in our field have done in the past or do now.

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Very inspiring. I salute.

Startups.in/India
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BorderJ, 14 December 2006, 11:19 am

Coooooooooooool!!!!!

nah, 15 December 2006, 4:45 am

Norvig is what can be called a very very intelligent man. And if you look at it from a technical literature point of view, he stands close to the greatest computer scientist we know. So, i’d give him props for not answering personal and bullshit questions (like the last 2 ones).

That said, Guido have a strange sense of humor (i couldnt decide if he’s ironic or arrogant…).

Only one thing: ‘Stroustrup: The Dixie Chicks.’ that had me laughing hard!

nah

1000copy, 17 December 2006, 3:07 pm

Good qustion,and funny answer
很好的问题，很有趣的回答。

Hello world! at blik.it, 17 February 2007, 12:55 pm

[...] A lot of knowledgeable computer programmers praise Emacs. Others acknowledge Emacs’ power and flexibility but complain about its visual appearance. The thing is, freshly installed “vanilla” Emacs doesn’t have all the bells and whistles so common in other editors, like TextMate - for example, a MacOS only editor very poplary among Ruby programmers. In order to achieve a good visual apperance you have to customize it, just like everything else in Emacs, because this editor is not actualyy an editor itself. It is, as Stiff puts it, “an editor building framework” [...]

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[...] A lot of knowledgeable computer programmers praise Emacs. Others acknowledge Emacs’ power and flexibility but complain about its visual appearance. The thing is, freshly installed “vanilla” Emacs doesn’t have all the bells and whistles so common in other editors, like TextMate - for example, a MacOS only editor very poplary among Ruby programmers. In order to achieve a good visual apperance you have to customize it, just like everything else in Emacs, because this editor is not actualyy an editor itself. It is, as Stiff puts it, “an editor building framework”. [...]

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Schweinfurt, 7 April 2007, 1:59 pm

Thanks for very interesting article.Keep up the good work. Greetings

who_cares, 3 May 2007, 12:43 am

Loved guido’s answers.
If anyone here is a moron it has to be Peter Norvig.
I dont like him anyway.
(It has nothing to do with my getting C grade in AI course )

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Sultan, 16 June 2007, 5:50 pm

can I translate this to arabic ….
it will be helpful for these who speak arabic

stiff, 16 June 2007, 6:41 pm

Of course you can :)

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Onkar, 17 October 2007, 11:01 am

Hi Stiff,
This is really wonderful work! Thanks for this valuable information.

parknitrichy, 17 October 2007, 6:20 pm

Incredible ! Inventors sparing some time for interviews and special appreciation to stiff to come forward to throw it on net in defiance to reading usual junks.

spike, 2 November 2007, 12:53 pm

Bjarne rocks!!!!!!i am a huge fan of him.

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verycoolguy, 16 December 2007, 8:25 pm

add this GREAT Programmers to your list :::

herbt schild ==> writes cool programing books

david mackenzie ==> wrote lots of gnu utilitis

eti, 7 January 2008, 7:23 pm

Nice to know things about this guys :) … good job

Vova Mumar, 28 January 2008, 7:05 pm

Great interview, thanks!

Renjith, 24 April 2008, 8:06 am

Excellent Questions and brilliant answers. its worth reading. thanks for your efforts

Benjamin Bvalani, 5 September 2008, 4:20 pm

I would like to congratulate all the Gurus in this blog they make our lives easier and although i am a newbie in programming from Africa, i still believe one day i will create my own Language too.

All i pray for is longlife for all the Gurus around earth.May the Good Lord put more into thy brains.

Kumbukani Malinda, 18 September 2008, 4:35 pm

Yeah I appreciate for your works and efforts it made our life simple and we will improve programming to higher level Big up Mpadre

Lawand, 19 September 2008, 12:28 am

Great Stuff!
I linked to this article to my blog, if there’s no problem :)
(http://lawand.wordpress.com)

PINguAR, 16 November 2008, 12:01 am

guido hit me from the heart with his answers..

javacikiz, 22 November 2008, 10:21 pm

linus and I have the same taste of music and also programimg :D

Compounding Pharmacy, 26 December 2008, 7:03 am

“This is the greatest post I have come across so far.I am really pleased to post my comment on this blog .I love your blog by the way, I am gonna have to add you to my list of watched blogs .Thank you for this very useful information. stored it.Thanks again and keep up the good work.”

Stellathomas, 27 February 2009, 8:27 am

An wonderful post. Thanks for the author for such postings.
———
Stellathomas

Cv interview questions

satish, 8 March 2009, 7:52 am

Awesome, … thanks for the interview !!!

Manuel, 6 April 2009, 1:16 pm

Anyone who found this post interesting should get hold of a copy of the book “Programmers at Work” by Susan Lammers - if still available. I read it in a Spanish translation back in 1988 when starting my CS degree. It is a collection of interviews with 19 top programmers of the moment (e.g., Jaron Lanier, Butler Lampson, Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld… Bill Gates) including code snapshots. A must read, even if only to see how things have (or have not) changed in 20 years.

Cv interview questions, 14 April 2009, 10:54 am

It is a great website. Your article was interesting.
Suzzane Waltz
cv and interviews

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amol, 18 June 2009, 8:32 pm

Too Good an Interview ..

znakomstva, 25 June 2009, 11:43 am

uld answer a number of questions about what it takes to become a great programmer. He then blogged the answers.
Linus, said this in his a

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I think visual Basic wasn’t a great language, but I think the easy DB interfaces in VB were fundamentally more important than object orientation is.

mike, 11 August 2009, 4:31 am

It’s fantastic that these guys took the time to answer your questions. But I have to say I’m a little disappointed in Guido Van Rossum’s replies. It’s obvious that he didn’t care to offer any worthwhile comments.

Jonatan Andersson (jonix) 's status on Tuesday, 11-Aug-09 06:13:33 UTC - Identi.ca, 11 August 2009, 8:13 am

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peeping tom, 11 August 2009, 12:45 pm

Where’s Peter Norvig’s music reply??

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Boris Petersen (transacid) 's status on Tuesday, 11-Aug-09 12:16:09 UTC - Identi.ca, 11 August 2009, 2:16 pm

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h3, 11 August 2009, 4:06 pm

> Dave Thomas:
> …
> However, I _have_ seen a strong correlation between people who have > some music in their background and programming skills. I have no idea why, but I suspect that some of the areas of the brain that make someone musical also make them good at software development.

I’ve noticed this too, not only with musician, but with artists in general..

As an artist myself I can tell why, in fact he himself gave the answer;

> Dave Thomas:
>
> Passion.

Also artists, visual or musical, often have a very strong aptitudes to grasp, understand complexes patterns and work-flows because they are able to visualize more easily abstract concepts.

nooboi, 11 August 2009, 9:52 pm

Guido Van Rossum: Genetic differet brain structure.
He is either elitist or correct or somewhere in between.
I strongly hope he is elitist.

IMO **laziness** separates bad programmers from good ones.
Be lazy, code buggy (TM)

Disclaimer: Strictly IMO, obviously YMMV.

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Bruce Lerner, 15 August 2009, 9:21 pm

Thanks for the insight into a set of important thinker-doers in the computing world. Stiff for the questions and Linus, Dave, David, Steve, Peter, Guido, Bjarne, James, Tim for their answers.

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Ted, 16 November 2009, 6:04 pm

Hey Stiff,
great questions. The last two questions were completely related to programming- and good ones at that. If I were trying to get more information on remote desktop software for example, I’d know what to read.
Thanks for the post!

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Good article. Thanks

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Interview with Great Programmers | Yazılar |, 7 February 2010, 3:29 pm

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Volker from Germany, 4 May 2010, 8:58 pm

Hi,
ich kam durch Zufall auf diese Seite und möchte einen netten Gruß
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Herzliche Grüße
Volker Lange

yamakk blog » Blog Archive » アーキテクチャの生態系を読んだ, 10 May 2010, 12:10 pm

[...] Stifflog – Stiff asks, great programmers answer Sorry, I’m not much of a crystal ball person. I predicted CGI about 5 years after it had been invented. :-) [...]

Chrsitel, 13 May 2010, 7:20 am

Hi,
ich kam durch Zufall auf diese Seite und möchte einen netten Gruß
hinterlassen ;) Ich würde mich freuen, wenn ihr auf meiner Homepage auch einmal vorbei schauen würdet! Vielleicht wollt ihr einmal auf Sylt/ Westerland oder an der Ostsee Urlaub machen?! Wir haben dort sehr schöne Meerblickwohnungen. Vielleicht bis bald einmal!
Herzliche Grüße

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Steve Yegge taught himself programming. There must be something wrong with me as im in 3rd year uni and still getting my head around c++….

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I wanted to make some dynamic pieces and picked up first ASP then PHP. After I already knew how to program, I then started on a joint computer science and business administration degree.

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