I’m asking genuinely: What’s the point of linking to Carmack’s tweet? The intellectual curiosity (what HN is ostensibly about) is all in the quoted tweet (despite it being written like an LLM trained on LinkedIn posts). Carmack isn’t really adding anything of importance or interest. Linking to him feels a bit cult of personality, as if Bellard is deserving of attention because Carmack gave some vague praise with qualifiers. Why not link directly to the quoted tweet, or even the Wikipedia page?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
Surely we are all capable of understanding Bellard’s contributions and judge them on their own merits without needing some famous programmer to point directly at it and saying “this good”.
The tweet also reads a bit off to me too. Carmack positions himself as if he is a some sort of a litmus test for being a great and successful programmer, which I don't doubt that he is but it's a bit strange. Egotripping.
If most people would agree with that, is it really egotripping?
This has gotten a ton of upvotes, then a ton of downvotes. Yet no one has yet answered the question. If you are downvoting, presumably you believe there is a point to linking to Carmack’s tweet. That it somehow adds more value than the alternative. So please explain why. Like I said before, I am asking genuinely.