D. J. Bernstein quickly won my heart with his sparse writing style (“You can send me email at […]; I might respond within a few months.”), clean web pages and beautifully elegant code. I use his software, including djbdns and qmail. Its utter simplicity, transparency and operational elegance is deeply moving. His work is some of the best examples of the Unix “small is beautiful” philosophy I’ve ever seen. His mathematical work is impressive and I admire his support of putting papers online. He teaches several courses downtown — I’m very tempted to go there to see him. Ooh, there’s are videos of some of his courses (grep for “video”)… Wow, in this one he doesn’t sound like I imagined from his writing nor look like I imagined from his voice.
posted August 01, 2002 01:12 PM (Superheroes) #