> It would be hard to think of another programmer whose body of public work is more impressive than FB.

I am of the firm belief that "Monsieur Fabrice Bellard" is not one person but a group of programmers writing under this nom de plume like "Nicolas Bourbaki" was in Mathematics ;-)

I don't know of any other programmer who has similar breadth and depth in so many varied domains. Just look at his website - https://bellard.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard No self-aggrandizing stuff etc. but only tech. He is an ideal for all of us to strive for.

Watson's comment on how Sherlock Holmes made him feel can be rephrased in this context as;

"I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours [i.e. fellow programmers], but I was [and am] always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with [the works of Fabrice Bellard]."

PS: Fabrice Bellard: Portrait of a Super-Productive Programmer - https://web.archive.org/web/20210128085300/https://smartbear...

PPS: Fabrice Bellard: A Computer Science Pioneer - https://www.scribd.com/document/511765517/Fabrice-Bellard-In... (pretty good long article)

The last link has more info than I've seen elsewhere. Here's an altenative link with PDF download. https://www.ipaidia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/117-2020-f...