Get Famous By Not Programming

Since you asked,

- Donald Knuth;
- Bjarne Stroustrup;
- And to a lesser degree, Kernighan and Ritchie.

"big hairy ball"? The formal name: Big Ball of Mud

You are so right and I love you for it, even thought you are not that great programmer.
Programmers focus on their code being great and perfect, great enterpreneurs, with programmer background focus on getting product on time.
I don't think that getting XX$ or XXX$ (I crossed actual figures before posting)per hour for what you do, even without world wide recognition is that bad deal after all. Only few other professions make as much money as we do. And lastly any programmer can recognize great code when he see's it.
Thanks for writing, it brought up some good points.

Regards,
Zeljko

In addition to being erudite, entertaining, and having a loud mouth (Thank you!), your audience understands and agrees with your point of view (mostly). You can not lead people where they are unwilling or unable to follow... Unless you have a goon squad to back you up. Are any famous programmers coercive?

From "Stop, Hey What’s That Sound": "hurray for our side"!!!

Are you influencing the evolution of computer science, or reflecting it?

You want to change the world? Create a main stream alternative to "early von Neumann". Please.

> And aside from a few interviews,
> Carmack hasn't written smack.

Well, he has published quite a bit of technical material in form of .plan updates. Those probably helped a lot with getting famous in coder circles, but I agree the primary reason must be his phenomenal success and constant stream of stunning work.

You can try the experiment yourself. I'm actually curious. Go through the list of programmers you admire most (people you don't know personally), and decide why you admire each of them.

I think you'll find the same thing I did: each person either wrote a framework you like, or they write about technical topics really well (or at least in a way that keeps you coming back for more.)

The only person who breaks this rule on my list is why the lucky stiff. But then again, he breaks all the rules.

Heh, my list of favorite programmers is rather narrow, as I'm not much of programmer.

Programmers I adore/appreciate the existance of:

Steve Yegge - Wrote wyvern, which satisfied years of rpg itch. Also, his blog rants are both funny, way over my head and as best as I can tell, true. It's like when someone plays peek-a-boo with a baby, each time is simply hilarious and enlightening, even if I have no idea what is going on.

Walter Bright - Created the "D" language, which as best I can tell is better than C++, easier to write in and is just as fast (whatever people may say about computers getting faster, those same people need to realize not everyone has a couple hundred $ computer, especially in other countries... I despise java because of this :\).

The masses who create BZFlag - Best arcade-like FPS. Quick, easy to learn, hard to master. More like real time chess.

>from *becomeing* an evil manager or a

becoming not becomeing. Typo

Most programmers are indeed wealthy, but perhaps don't think of themselves that way. I consider making 2 to 3 times the median income (which is around $33K in US) to be wealthy.

Hi!
Man, you ARE getting famous. Did you read THAT?

When I was reading the article, I felt some sort of enlightenment.

I'd go even further than you - writing programming blogs is the best way of becoming a famous programmer.

First reason - blog are usually named after their authors, so unless your blog has a weird name, every regular reader immediately knows who you are.

On the other hand most people who read books and use software don't have any idea who wrote them.

Blogs are a lot easier to write, and a lot easier to popularize than books. They also seem to generate greater feeling of "connection" between the reader and the autho .

So if you have a popular blog on programming, named after you, then you're guaranteed to be a famous and respected programmer.

Becoming famous by writing software is much more difficult. Let's say that you somehow managed to some write very popular software. Let's say that you somehow managed to make people associate the program with you. That's even more difficult and has more to do with marketing than programming. How many people can name author of libc on their system ? But somehow everyone can name author of 2% of just another reimplementation of Unix kernel.

Even then, when people use your software and know who wrote it, you're as likely to be hated as respected. If someone considers you author of some program, they will intuitively blame you for all faults of the program (for their completely subjective definition of "fault"). If the program is very faulty (few big systems aren't), the most you can achieve is infamy.

It's hard to tell whom are you going to hate. For example I intuitively consider Bjarne Stroustrup a Saddam Hussein of programming for C++ massacre of programmers. I know he's a smart guy, and he didn't mean the mess he caused, but it feelings rarely have rational sources.

I used to consider Larry Wall and rest of the Perl band programming geniuses, but then they committed one of the most unbelievable screw-ups in history of programming, and decided to abandon Perl 5 and make Perl 6 a reimplementation of everything from scratch. Everybody with half a brain could have told them in 2000 that it doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of succeding. If it wasn't for Pugs, they wouldn't even have pre-alphas.

I still have this deeply intuitive respect for Yukihiro Matsumoto, David Heinemeier Hansson and whoever came up with Smalltalk and unit testing, but this feeling can easily be broken.

And I somehow have a lot of intuitive respect for people who write programming blogs that I find insightful. For me Steve Yegge's blog provided a lot more enlightenment than any other (high volume helps a lot, as do similar attitude). Paul Graham's and Joel's were also pretty insightful, as were many posts by dozens of bloggers whose names I do not remember. This feeling somehow doesn't get weakened if most of the stuff on a blog is irrelevant or even plain stupid (Wasabi ...). I guess that's mostly because I can read only good posts and ignore the bad ones, with programs or books it's closer to all-or-nothing and good parts cannot usually be used without also using bad parts.

I'm not rich yet, but last three months have been VERY profitable (quit my job, working online now, long story...)

SO If you want to get rich then

1. Don't buy "Get Rich Quick" programs

2. Don't go to school forever

3. Do get a mentor

4. Do take a time management course

5. Do buy "money making strategy" ebooks ( ie from http://www.MillionDollarScience.com )

6. Do take occational risk

7. Do believe that you can earn massive amounts of money - I know I did!!

> Well, geez, that seems pretty broad. We
> don't bother to go verify most of the
> stuff we know (or think we know) — does
> that mean we're all really superstitious?

My psych prof never told us chicken stories. He did however give us two weeks advance notice on a sex lecture.

That lecture theatre had never been so busy. There were people sitting in the aisles (most of whom weren't studying psychology and had never been to a psych lecture in their lives).

Thus proving that not only are people really superstitious, they also have sex on the brain.

J

Great post: thought provoking, erudite, and so "crystal tower". It has spawned a good deal of discussion at our company.

Not all companies can or ever will be google, some will be successful, some not. At the heart of the successful is an A player team that sets the bar for performance and innovation. That is the common thread.

The process wogs will do what process wogs do: create derivations and permutations of methodologies that add the next widget to the 'process leatherman'. Process after all is only a tool.

Excellent post dude. Just love your insights. Keep on ranting dude!