[teddyh]

From the essay:

> In contrast there are masters in the martial arts who learned their art as a means of survival and became masters in a realistic and hostile environment. We don’t have anyone like this in the programming profession, or at least I haven’t met any.

Charles H. Moore springs to mind.

[mabbo]

> learned their art as a means of survival

A friend of mine posted this a couple years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7950190

It's fantastic meeting people who learned to program because they had to. They have a totally different perspective on it.

[pavel_lishin]

> Charles H. Moore springs to mind.

Can you expand on this?

[teddyh]

Quote from (http://www.ultratechnology.com/1xforth.htm):

“I wish I knew what to tell you that would lead you to write good Forth. I can demonstrate. I have demonstrated in the past, ad nauseam, applications where I can reduce the amount of code by 90% percent and in some cases 99%. It can be done, but in a case by case basis. The general principle still eludes me.”