The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Charles Simonyi is RICH!

http://www.forbes.com/maserati/billionaires2004/LIRVMOW.html?passListId=10&passYear=2004&passListType=Person&uniqueId=VMOW&datatype=Person

He's on the Forbes list.

Anybody know he's worth *billions*?

Karl Max
Saturday, March 20, 2004

I told you Hungarian notation paid off.

Joel Spolsky
Fog Creek Software
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Good one Joel :-)

Fred
Saturday, March 20, 2004

He will be the first one punished for his EVIL DEEDS,
Once the GPL revolution wins

GNU
Saturday, March 20, 2004

If his new gig at http://intentsoft.com/ ( http://news.com.com/2008-7343_3-5162264.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news ) is successful, he could as well increase his net worth tenfold.

Alex Chalucov
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Anyone know how to pronounce Simonyi? Not knowing how to pronounce his name (or any others, for that matter) has always bugged me.

As a side note, I came across this quote in an interview with him:

"I'll bet you that from ten feet away I can tell if a program is bad. I might not guarantee that it is good, but if it looks bad from ten feet, I can guarantee you that it wasn't written with care. And if it wasn't written with care, it's probably not beautiful in the logical sense."

(source: http://www.shamit.org/charles_simonyi.htm )

I just love that quote. Wouldn't that be a great first step in code reviews?

Nick
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Assuming it's standard Hungarian, it would be pronounced

Si - mo - nyi

The o is long, and the i's are like the i in machine:

See - mo - nyee

The ny is a bit harder; think of the "Nyuk nyuk nyuk!" of the Three Stooges, perhaps.

Kyralessa
Saturday, March 20, 2004

she-mo-ne

Saturday, March 20, 2004

si - mon - ize

Joe on Software (Joe)
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Fuck off, cock-sucker.

Sky Captain
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Charles was one of the early people at MS and probably has quite a lot of MS stock - that's why he's rich!

MX
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Elephant is right, it was more to do with hardware than software...

The latter contributions anyhow.

Simon Lucy
Sunday, March 21, 2004

--"was more to do with hardware than software."---

Not at our age Simon :)

Stephen Jones
Sunday, March 21, 2004

Stephen,

that's funny that you said. :-) Anyway, those guys got way too far from discussing the actual topic.

Hungarian notation is considered obsolete now, am I right? Just because its damn hard to give a unique prefix to every of a zillion existent objects types (classes).

Vlad Gudim
Monday, March 22, 2004

> Hungarian notation is considered obsolete now, am I right?

I still use an "m_" prefix, to distinguish member data from other types of data.

Christopher Wells
Monday, March 22, 2004

And I still prefix every "base" data type (like int, bool, double) with something pointing to its type. And yes, I use small "s" for prefixing standard .NET string objects in C#.

Vlad Gudim
Monday, March 22, 2004

Dunno how the average American pronounces his name, but in Hungarian it's SHE-mo-n~e, where e is like the e in 'she', o is like the o in 'low', and n~ is like the ny in 'canyon' or the gn in French 'montagne'.

Martha
Monday, March 22, 2004

> like the ny in 'canyon' or the gn in French 'montagne'

I pronounce canyon with the front of my tongue (like "pinion"), but "montagne" with the back of my tongue (like "flinging").

Christopher Wells
Monday, March 22, 2004

Hungarian is very common among Access and VB programmers.

It is useful to be able to distinguish between controls, lblstudentID and cboStudentID, and also between forms and the queries or tables they are based on
frmFinalExamMarks as opposed to qryFinalExamMarks

Eric Lippert had some insightful comments on Hungarian in an earlier thread on JOS. Do a Google search for "Hungarian", restricting the domain to JOS and you will find some interesting discussions.

Stephen Jones
Monday, March 22, 2004

> Hungarian notation is considered obsolete now, am I right?

Still compiles w/o warning with my setup.

Monday, March 22, 2004

"Dunno how the average American pronounces his name, but in Hungarian it's SHE-mo-n~e..."

Oops, she's right. Single s in Hungarian is "sh"; sz in Hungarian is "s". Hey, don't look at me, my wife is Hungarian but refuses to practice the language with me; she gets bored in five minutes.

Kyralessa
Monday, March 22, 2004