Ask HN: Tell me about the best programmer you worked with
13 jvanderbot 4 8/17/2025, 12:59:19 AM
I'll start. A colleague would be politely suggesting designs or changes, but rolling with the punches when people disagreed. They were always proven right eventually, and it was usually because someone wandered into a module they had written and loved it.
They changed a lot about how I worked, and by far their main characteristics were patience with us and a sort of completeness to whatever they wrote. It just arrived, maybe with one small adjustment or bugfix, bug never with a rearchitecture or major refactor required.
It’s been a decade or so since I worked with Isaac and I looked him up to find he is at OpenAI. Fitting.
He taught me that developers are difficult/impossible to control and to not be possessive or emotional about code. He also taught me tools and tricks in Linux that I still use today.