Zz Q&A With Nine Great Programmers

Q&A With Nine Great Programmers

This Q&A article is originally from 2006, published on the blog of Polish developer Jaroslaw "sztywny" Rzeszótko (AKA "Stiff").  That original blog post is no longer online. Gratefully republished with his permission.

On a hot, boring afternoon I got an idea. With the help of publicly accessible e-mail addresses, I asked 10 questions to a bunch of programmers that I consider very interesting people and I respect them for various things they created. Coming out with the questions 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 this, I learnt a lot of interesting stuff, so it was definitely 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).
-- Jaroslaw

Starring

Linus Torvalds  - The Linux kernel author.

Dave Thomas - Author of the "Pragmatic 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 blog here .

Steve Yegge - Probably one of the least known guys here, but he also sent most interesting answers. He has a popular blog 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 here .

Guido Van Rossum - The Python language creator.

Bjarne Stroustrup - C++ language 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.


Q 1: 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.


Q 2: 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 fundamental 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.


Q 3: 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.


Q 4: 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.


Q 5: If you had three months to learn one relatively 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.


Q 6: 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
Genetically different 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.


Q 7: 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 fuss.

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.


Q 8: 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).

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


Q 9: 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 enjoyed, 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.

Tim Bray
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich


Q 10: What are your favourite music bands/performers/composers?

Steve Yegge
Favourite genres: classical, anime soundtracks, video-game music
Favourite composers: Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Bach
Favourite performers: David Russell (classical guitar), Sviatoslav Richter (piano)
Favourite 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.

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Postscript

How I found this: I was reading this post by Jeff Atwood, titled "Linus Torvalds, Visual Basic Fan " where the source article he linked to was: "STIFF ASKS, GREAT PROGRAMMERS ANSWER ". But that link was dead, and doing a search didn't find any trace of it anywhere on the net. So I resorted to an archive.org search and sure enough, up popped this incredible blog post by Jaroslaw Rzeszótko.

Due to it no longer being available on the net, I thought it should reposted again so others can enjoy reading it. I requested permission from the original author to do this, and he happily obliged - thanks again Jaroslaw!

 

The original article is at : http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/09/q-with-nine-great-programmers.html

 

这篇访谈源自2006年，最先发布在波兰程序员 Jaroslaw “sztywny” Rzeszótko (AKA “Stiff”) 的博客上。但是这篇博文现在找不到了。非常感谢他能授权我重新发布这个博文。

在一个炎热无聊的下午，我突发奇想。我想通过电子邮件的方式对那些我非常感兴趣 和非常敬重的程序员问10个问题。准备这10个问题我只花了5分钟，这些都是我个人想问他们的问题，所以，我基本上没想太多要问他们什么。最后两个问题和 编程没有什么关系，我就是想问题这些人的一些兴趣爱好。另外，不是每一个人都想回答我的，这是我第一次做“访谈”，所以，我犯了一些错误，一些问题没有得 到回答。不管怎么样，我得到了很多很有意思的内容，所以，这对我绝对是一次很有意义的经历。

并不是每一个人都回了我的邮件，也并不是每一个人都同意回答我的这些问题，也许在我发布这篇文章后我会得到那些回答，但是我已经迫不及待想把这些东西发布了，所以，我可能会更新这篇文章（更新：2006年3月8日，我收到了Bjarne Stroustrup的回信 ）

– Jaroslaw

介绍

• Linus Torvalds  - Linux kernel  作者。

• Dave Thomas – “Pragmatic Programmer”(注：douban ) 和 “Programming Ruby”(注：douban ) 以及其它一些优秀书籍的作者。 你可以在 这里  读读他对编程的一些想法。

• David Heinemeier Hansson –   Rails Framework  作者- 一个目前最新最热的Web开发框架。他的blog在 这里 . （陈皓注：他也是37signals 的领导人之一）

• Steve Yegge – 他可能并不那么知名，但是他给了很多有意思的回答。他有一个很火的关于编程的 blog ，他也是游戏 ”Wyvern” 的作者。（陈皓注：他最火的是去年在google+上对google和amazon的吐槽 ，06年他应该在google了）

• Peter Norvig – Research Director at Google, 知名的 Lisper，AI书的著名作家，个人主页 。

• Guido Van Rossum – Python  发明者。

• Bjarne Stroustrup – C++发明者， 个人主页 。

• James Gosling –  Java  发明者。

• Tim Bray –  XML 和 Atom 规格说明书作者之一 个人博客  。

Q 1: 你是怎么学编程的？是从学校里学的吗？或者你没有上过学:) ？

Steve Yegge

在我17岁的时候，我在HP的计算器中用他们的RPN 栈语言自学编程的。在这之前，我尝试过学习编程一两次，但都没有学成。HP 28c 和 48g 的科学计算器是一个很牛的东西，而且还有不错的文档。我搞了一本3D图形的书，并很费力地把其中的Pascal语言转成RPN栈语言，并用48g写了一个 3D的线框图渲染图。运行的还不错，在我买了PC和Turbo Pascal之后，我开始认真地学习编程。在我进入大学计算机科学专业之前，我已经是一个不错的程序员了。

我在华盛顿大学拿到了计算机科学学位，这绝对是有价值的，所以，我建议所有的程序员都应该得到计算机科学专业的学位。

Linus Torvalds

我没有在学校里学过编程，我在主要是读我自己想读的书，或是就直接去编程 (一开始在 Commodore VIC-20  学编程， 然后是 Sinclair QL 上编程)。

当然，我觉得上大学非常有用。我没有去一个工科大学，我上了赫尔辛基大学，这是一个比较偏理论的大学，所以，那里的教育并没有那么多的编程的东西 （编程只是很少一部分），这里大多数的课程都倾向于教一些基础概念的东西，如：复杂性分析。看上去很无聊，甚至有点浪费时间，但是我还是觉得这些课有用， 我对大多数课都还比较enjoy。所以，我觉得我可能在这些方面是一个比较好的程序员。

David Heinemeier Hansson

我学编程是从用HTML做我的第一个网页开始的。那时，我想当我的网页能动态地显示一些内容，所以，我选择了ASP和PHP。在做完这个网页后，我知道了怎么去编程，于是我开始我的计算机科学和商业管理学位的学习。

Peter Norvig

我是从高中和大学课程中学编程的，但是我还是觉得我自己学得更多。

Dave Thomas

我是在高中学编程的。我完全地迷住了，我对编程爱得无法自拔，然后，我开始挑选那些提供软件开发课程的大学。最终，我去了伦敦大学的帝国学院。第二 年我就开始学习软件开发的课程了，那绝对是非凡的，学生和教员在一起工作把教材做得更好，每一个人都可以从中学到很多。这些课程给了我难以置信和非常雄厚 的软件开发背景。我在那里读到了博士，最后去创业了。

关于“我是怎么学编程的”这个问题，我的回答是“我现在还在学编程”。我认为好的程序员一生都在学编程。这并不是去学一门语言或是一个代码库，好的程序员会对他们的编程技艺一年又一年地精益求精。

Guido Van Rossum

我去的那个大学有一个大型主机和很多不同的计算机课程。这对我很重要。

James Gosling

起初，我是自学的。在我去上大学之前，我就找到了一份程序员的工作。但是我很高兴我去了大学，在那里有很多乐趣，最终我学到了博士。

Bjarne Stroustrup

我先上的是Aarhus大学， 然后是 剑桥大学(Cambridge)，这两个大学教了我很多很有用的东西，这些东西为了以后的工作打下了基础。另外，我对编程和钱的关系学得非常好——知道了真实世界的问题，正确性，维护性，准时交付，等等，这些比教育可能更重要。

Tim Bray

我本来想去做一个数学老师的。但是，那个学数学的大学要我去学几个计算机的课。

Q 2: 你们觉得对程序员最重要的事是什么？

Steve Yegge

沟通能力（写和说）。除非你可以让你的想法更有效率地传递出去，否则你不可能做得比编程更多的事。程序员应该疯狂地阅读，锻炼写作能力，参加一些写作培训课程，甚至锻炼在公开场合演讲的能力。

Linus Torvalds

It’s a thing I call “taste”. 有一件事，我把它叫做“品味”。

我倾向于不从熟练程度来评判那些和我工作过的人。这些人能非常艰苦地写出很多代码，但是我想从他们对别人的代码的反应做出评判，这样我们就可以明白 他们自己写的代码怎么样，知道他们使用的方法怎么样。他们对别人的评判还告诉我，他们是不是有好的“品味”。是这样的，如果一个人没有“好的品味”，那么 他一般不会很好的评判他人的代码，他自己写的代码通常也不会很好。

哦，这并不只是唯一的事。还有一件事，尤其在开源项目里，那是他是否有能力能和别人进行简单的沟通，告诉别人他要干什么，怎么干。这个能力可以告诉别人为什么你干的事是非常重要的，并不是所有的人都有这个能力。

也就是说，有一些人可以写出很不错的代码，但他们并不一定能解释这些代码，他们也并不一定有好的品味，但是代码可以运行得不错。有时，你需要另一个 人（有那种不错的品味的人）把他的代码转成更好的形式。也就是说，任何一个程序员都需要那种可以用清晰的代码来解决复杂问题的基础能力。

David Heinemeier Hansson

很强的对有价值的事的感觉。你可以问问自己这个问题你有没有这种能力：我现在做的这个事值不值得做？很多程序员浪费了如大海一样的时间去做一些无意义的事。

Peter Norvig

我不觉得只有一个，如果要我说一个的话，我说是“专注”。

Dave Thomas

热情。

Guido Van Rossum

你的问题很难回答啊:-) 我猜，如果程序员会在早晨煎个鸡蛋做早餐，那真是无价的能力。

James Gosling

自我激发。你需要全身心地投入到你要做的事中。

Bjarne Stroustrup

把事想清楚的能力：程序必需要能清楚地理解问题并能清楚地表述解决方案。

Tim Bray

能为自己的直觉提供证据的能力。

Q 3: 你是否认为数学和/或物理是一种很重要的编程技能？为什么？

Steve Yegge

数学有很多的分支和程序员相关，他们是“离散数学”和“具体数学”。这些分支包括的学科有，概率论，组合数学，图论，归纳证明，和其它有用的东西。我会鼓励所有的程序员都去学习离散数学，无论能学多少，因为这总比什么都不懂强。

对于传统的数学，我也不经常用，但是我需要的时候这些数据知识会很管用。例如，在我之前的工作中我就用到了微积分。我需要估计每个小时中某服务的高 峰时间的流量负载，所以，他的负载是跟着太阳走的就像一个正弦曲线一样。最简单的方式就是把每个小时的负载曲线给整合起来。如果我不知道微积分，我就不知 道怎么更为准确地估计。

当年我在开发我的Wyvern游戏的时候，我的平面几何的知识对我非常有帮助。而且经常使用代数和线性代数的知识。但我很少在工作中使用三角学或微分方程，微积分同样也很少。

我想说，简单的数学基础让我的技能比一般程序员好过5%到10%。如果我了解更多的数学，我确信我会比今天做得更好，所以，我每周都会花几个小时学习数学。

我喜欢物理，我还在学习物理，我会花我一生去理解量子力学。但是我个却没有发现物理对我的程序员工作有多有用。当然，如果我从事一些和物理相关的工作，可能会有用，例如：3D游戏编程，或是某种物理特性仿真。

Linus Torvalds

我个人认为有很强的数学背景是一件好事。但我不确信物理是不是这样的，但是我深信懂数学的人会让你成为一个更好的程序员。这些智力模型都是相通的。

David Heinemeier Hansson

根本没用。至少对业务编程和Web应用来说没用。但是数学可能对一个人的写作有很重要的帮助。

Peter Norvig

是的。很多相法都是从数学来的：归纳，递归，逻辑，等等。

Dave Thomas

也许吧。但老实说，我没见到过懂这些学科和好的程序员有很大的相关性。

然而，我见过有音乐背景和好的编程技能有很强的相关性。我不知道这为什么，但是我怀疑大脑中的某个区域可以让人即可以写出好的音乐，也可以写出好的代码。（陈皓注：@Sir阿怪   貌似就是这个例子）

Guido Van Rossum

数学，当然（对于一些学科是很重要的，我不关心微分方程，但是代数和逻辑学是很重要的），物理，我不觉得对编程技能有关，当然物理在其它很多地方很有意思。

James Gosling

当然！数学教会了我逻辑和推导……让我有了一双懂分析的眼睛。当我们分析算法的时候，数学是无法被取代的。

Bjarne Stroustrup

这要看程序员自己和项目性质了。以前的数据很有用，物理一般，但是学好物理是是学习应用数据最好的一条路。

Tim Bray

对我来说，在我的编程生涯中我从来都没有用过大学里教的数学。

Q 4: 关于编程，你们认为接下来的大事是什么？X-Oriented编程，Y语言，量子电脑 ？

Steve Yegge

我认为Web编程会逐渐变成最最重要的客户端编程。而对于原来传统的客端端编程都会被废弃，如： GTK, Java Swing/SWT, Qt, 当然，所有的和平台有关的东西，例如 Cocoa 和 Win32/MFC/等。

当然，这不会一晚上就发生了。这会在第一个十年内缓慢地发生，而在第二个十年内，Web Apps最终会胜利。工具，语言，协议，和浏览器技术都会进步得非常快，并会完全超出你今天能干的事。每一年都会向前进一步，而从今天开始，我会最终决定 把我所有的应用开发全部切换到基于浏览器的应用。（陈皓注：我也是这么认为的，参看《来信，创业，移动互联网 》）

微软和苹果最终不愿意这个事发生，所以，触发这个事的第一步会是一个开源的浏览器（如：Firefox）开始到了支配市场的地位，然后会出现某种Firefox的杀手级应用（这种杀手级应用可能会像iTunes一样，所有的人都会用它，只需要下载Firefox）

Linus Torvalds

我并不认为我们会看到一个“大的跳跃”。我们只会看到很多的工作帮助我们把那些沉闷辛苦的工作变得更简单——会有一个更高级别的语言，也许把简单的数据库集成到语言中来会是其中最主要一个。

例如，我个人相信“Visual Basic”在编程方面比“面向对象”做得更多。当然，人们都在取笑VB是一个很烂的编程语言，并且人们在谈论OO语言都十多年了。但我还觉得不是这样 的，Visual Basic 不是一个好的语言，但是我觉得VB那简单的数据库接口比OO更重要。

所以，我认为会语言有很多的改进，并且，硬件的改进会让编程更容易，但我并不期望会有巨大的生产力或是革命性的改进。

至少，你不会开始搞真正的AI的东西，我也不认为真的AI会变成某种你不需要编程的东西。

David Heinemeier Hansson

我从不试图预测未来。我也不相信命运一说。最好预测未来的方式就是去实现未来。

Peter Norvig

大规模的分布式处理

Dave Thomas

下一个最牛的事会被再下一个最牛的事所掩盖，然后再被再再下一个所掩盖，再再再下一个所掩盖……。这是一件没完没了的事，所以，我并不会试图去找最 牛的事，因为这会让人们忘了那些最真实的问题：把基本的东西做对。我们要让用户更满意，专注于交付有价值的东西，自豪于我们做的事。一个程序员可以使用很 多工具把这些事做得更好，而不是去追逐时尚和流行。

Guido Van Rossum

对不起，我没有那么多水晶球。我CGI被发明了5年后预测过它 :-)

James Gosling

有两个事是我现在最关心的，那就是要对付并行和复杂。

Bjarne Stroustrup

我不知道，我也不愿猜。

Tim Bray

不知道。

Q 5: 如果你有3个月学一个相对较新的技术，你会学什么？

Steve Yegge

我的确有3个月的业余时间，我准备学一下 Dojo (http://dojotoolkit.org ) 和高级 AJAX 及 DHTML。我会通过开发一个相当牛的Web应用来学习他们。Dojo 真的酷，并且我确信它会越来越好。

Linus Torvalds

嗯，我真的很爱做 FPGA（可编程芯片），但我部是太忙了而不是坐来来开始学习。我喜爱和硬件打交道：很明显这个原因是因为我最终在做操作系统，因为操作系统（除了编译器）基本上都是在和硬件打交道，但我没有真正地自己去设计和做一个硬件。

David Heinemeier Hansson

Mac 的 Cocoa 编程

Peter Norvig

我想把 Javascript 学得更好，然也也想学 flash.

Dave Thomas

如果“新”是对于我来说，那么我会去学钢琴课。

如果“新”是说技术，我猜 我会选择学习某种和为残疾人服务的有关的技术。

Guido Van Rossum

单板滑雪。

James Gosling

搞点有乐趣的东西，我会学习最新的3D渲染技术。我可能会写一个光子映射渲染器。

Bjarne Stroustrup

3个月只有很少的东西你可以学，我觉得你只能参加某个成熟领域的培训。

Tim Bray

安全，加密，数字签名，身份标识，等等。对我来说，从没学过这些东西对我来说是个很大的问题。

Q 6: 你们觉得如何让一些程序员可能有超过其它程序员10倍或100倍的生产力？

Steve Yegge

我想你应该考虑一下为什么不是让所有的程序员都一样牛。托马斯爱迪生有一句关于天才的名言也许会给你一些启示。

Linus Torvalds

我真的不知道，我想，一些人之所以更牛是因为他们可以专注于那些重要的事，而更多的只不过是在应付。那些我所知道的真的很牛的程序员从很年轻的时候就在做事了。

David Heinemeier Hansson

把难题变简单的能力。

Peter Norvig

把整体问题一次性放入大脑的能力。

Dave Thomas

他们关心他们做的事。

Guido Van Rossum

大脑结构基因不同。

James Gosling

他们知道他们要做什么，他们不并不急于仓促行事。他们有他们要做的事的整个蓝图。

Bjarne Stroustrup

首先，缺少足够的职业培训，或基础不够。其次，这些人要即聪明（那种可以把事情想清楚，直达核心的能力），又有经验，并有使用工具的知识。编程需要把理论和实践结合起来 – 并不是使用没有实际业务的知识。

Tim Bray

令人惊讶的思维改变。

Q 7: 什么工具是你的最爱（操作系统，编程/脚本语言，文本编辑器，版本管理，shell，数据库，或其它没它你活不了的工具），为什么不是别的？

Steve Yegge

操作系统： Unix! 我用Linux，cygwin，和 darwin。你无法打败那些高效的工具。每一个程序员都应该学习使用/bin和/usr/bin下的所有命令。

脚本语言：Ruby。我几乎对所有的重要的脚本语言都很熟悉： Perl, Python, Tcl, Lua, Awk, Bash, 和一些我忘了的。但是我太懒了，而Ruby是目前所有脚本语言中最简单的，它应该是天堂制造的。

编程语言：没有一个我喜欢的，我觉得所有的编程语言都很扯。我倾向于Java，因为它很强，可跨平台，有多不错的工具和类库。但是Java未来会进化或是灭亡，Java还没有好到可以永远保持其领先地位。

文本编辑器：Emacs，因为这是迄今最好的编辑器。

版本管理：SVN，Perforce更好一些，但是也很贵。

Shell脚本： Bash, 因为我太懒了去学一个更好的。

数据库： 当然是MySQL，没有之一。

其它：我发现GIMP是无价的，但也是令人恼炎的。我用这个东西好几年了，但什么也没干，但是我没它活不了。很讽刺吧。Firefox 越来越是我最重要的工具。如果让我去用IE和Safari，我会有严重的窒息感。

注：所有的这些工具 (Unix, Emacs, Firefox, GIMP, MySQL, Bash, SVN, Perforce) 都有一个共同点：他们是可扩展的。例如：他们都有可编程的API。伟大的程序员知道怎么编写他们的工具，而不只是去使用。

Linus Torvalds

实际上，我最终也没有用过几个工具，而我却花了一些时间让这些工具为我工作。最大的事是我自己写了个操作系统，我也自己写了个版本管理系统（git），我用的文本编辑器是 micro-emacs – 最终我也定制和扩展了它。

除了上面三个，其它的东西，我深度关心我的邮件阅读软件，我使用“pine”，并不是因为它是史上最好的邮件阅读软件，因为我习惯了，用它我会有最低限度的大惊小怪。

David Heinemeier Hansson

OS X, TextMate, Ruby, Subversion, MySQL. 这些组合让我很快乐。我希望那些有好的品味的专注于重要的事的工具。

Peter Norvig

我不喜欢那三大操作系统 – Windows, Mac, Linux。我喜欢 Python 和 Lisp. Emacs.

Dave Thomas

在使用Linux10年后我转到Mac平台有两年多了。Mac并不见得有多好，但是它不需要很牛的技术，也不需要经常维护，这让我可以让我更专心得使用它。

我并不是一个单一工具的信仰者，我喜欢换来换去的，这样可以让我有更多的经历。现在，我使用 OSX, Emacs, TextMate, Rails, Ruby, SVN, CVS, Rake, make, xsltproc, TeX, MySQL, Postgres, 还有一堆高效的小工具。没人知道我明年会用什么。

Guido Van Rossum

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

James Gosling

这些天，我在用 NetBeans. 用它可以干我想干的所有的事，清洁，简单和高效。这是最好的我永远要生活在其中的环境了。

Bjarne Stroustrup

Unix, sam (一个非常简单的文本编辑器), 当然，一个好的C++编译器。

Tim Bray

我喜欢 Unix-like 的操作系统，像 Python 和 Ruby 的动态语言，像Java的静态语言（具体说来是Java API） Emacs, 还有, bash, whatever, NetBeans.

Q 8: 你最喜欢的编程书是什么？

Steve Yegge

大哥，这个问题太难了。也许是”Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” (作者Hofstadter)？虽然这不是严格意义上的编程的书，如果你要明确意义上的编程书，那么可能是 SICP (mitpress.mit.edu).

Linus Torvalds

嗨。这两天我在读一些小说，或是非计算机读物（老的但是有用的 “The Selfish Gene” 作者 Richard Dawkins)。

如果要问我编程的书，我脑子里只出现了唯 一一本真正的经典的编程的书 Kernighan & Ritchie 的 “The C Programming Language”，因为这本书太牛了，可读性强并且很短。考虚一下你想学到这世上一门最重要编程语言，并且它很要很薄，而且还有可读性，这真是一个奇 迹。

也就是说，其它我很喜欢的书并不是编程的，而是关于计算机结构和硬件的。那显然是 Patterson & Hennessy 的计算机结构的书，但是我个人也许更喜欢 Crawford & Gelsinger 的 “Programming the 80386?，这是我在开始写Linux时用的书。

相似的原因，我还喜欢 Andrew Tanenbaum 的 “Operating Systems: Design and Implementation”.

David Heinemeier Hansson

我喜欢 Extreme Programming Explained 其摒弃了一般的编程实践，我还喜欢 Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture 其出众地说明了抽象和具现的平衡。

Peter Norvig

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Dave Thomas

这关系到你所谓的“喜欢”，也许我最喜欢的是IBM的 “IBM/360 Principles of Operation.”

Guido Van Rossum

Neil Stephenson的 Quicksilver.

James Gosling

Programming Pearls 作者Jon Bentley.

Bjarne Stroustrup

K&R.

Tim Bray

Bentley的 Programming Pearls

Q 9: 你最喜欢的和编程无关的一本书是什么？

Steve Yegge

只能是一本吗？这不可能。有太多太多我喜欢的书了。

我这个月读过最喜欢的书是 “Stardust” (Neil Gaiman) 和 “The Mind’s I” (Hofstadter/Dennet).

我最喜欢的作者是 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 和 Jack Vance.

Linus Torvalds

我在前面说过 Dawkins的 Selfish Gene。在小说方面，有很多很多我enjoy的，但是几乎没有我特别喜欢的一本。我一般不会重读一本书，我的选择总是会变。我可能更喜欢科幻小说， 如：”Stranger in a Strange Land” 作者 Heinlein，这是我青少年时期最喜欢的书，但现在并不是我喜欢的了。

David Heinemeier Hansson

1984, George Orwell.

Guido Van Rossum

Neil Stephenson 的 Quicksilver.

James Gosling

Guns, Germs & Steel 作者 Jared Diamond

Bjarne Stroustrup

我没有固定喜欢的书。目前是 O’Brian 的 Aubrey/Maturin 系列。

Tim Bray

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Q 10: 你最喜欢的乐队/演奏家/作曲家？

Steve Yegge

喜欢的风格：古典音乐，动漫原声音乐，电脑游戏音乐

喜欢的作曲家：Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Bach

喜欢的演奏者：David Russell (古典吉它), Sviatoslav Richter (钢琴)

喜欢的动漫音乐： Last Exile, Haibane Renmei

Linus Torvalds

实际上我并不太喜欢音乐，但是当我听音乐的时候，我一般听经典摇滚乐，如： Pink Floyd ，Beatles ，Queen 和 The Who 乐队。

David Heinemeier Hansson

我喜欢很多风格。 Beth Orton, Aimee Mann, Jewel, Lauryn Hill. Actually, 所有的这些都可以归到 Girls with Guitars ;).

Guido Van Rossum

Philip Glass.

James Gosling

我喜欢听民歌: Christine Lavin, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger…

Bjarne Stroustrup

乐队: The Dixie Chicks. 作曲家: Beethoven.

Tim Bray

看我的博客吧。

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 补充说明

我之所以发现这篇文章，是因为我读到了 Jeff Atwood 的这篇名为 “Linus Torvalds, Visual Basic Fan ” 的文章，这篇文章指向了 “STIFF ASKS, GREAT PROGRAMMERS ANSWER ” 这篇文章，但是链接已坏了，然后，我搜了一下也没有搜到这篇文章。然后我去了 archive.org 搜了一下，并找到了这篇由 Jaroslaw Rzeszótko 写的博客。

因为这篇博文现在找不到了，所以，我想我应该重新把它贴出来，这样其它人可以读一下这篇有意思的文章。所以，我向原作者取得了授权，再次感谢 Jaroslaw!

 

原文地址：http://coolshell.cn/articles/8275.html#jtss-tsina