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Interview with Jon Skeet

by eddie_31003 on 2/2/15, 9:11 PM with 30 comments

  • by junto on 2/3/15, 3:38 AM

    As a fellow Brit and as someone working in C# everyday, Jon Skeet is somewhat of a personal hero of mine. I can't count the number of times I've turned to StackOverflow and found the answer to have be written by him. Chappeau!

    Interestingly we appear to have had similar paths to get to our careers. I too started off with BASIC and the BBC B Micro. I then went on to study Computer Science at GCSE, A-Level and then at university. Jon must be a similar age to me, so I'm guessing he also was one of the first to take GCSE's after the UK switched from the 'O-level' (1990-1991).

    Great little interview. Thanks for sharing @eddie_31003.

  • by johnny_reilly on 2/3/15, 9:57 AM

    Quite apart from his obvious technical chops, I've always been impressed by Jon Skeet's unfailing politeness and helpfulness. He's a real role model to developers.

    Whatta guy!

  • by S_A_P on 2/3/15, 4:03 AM

    This guy has always impressed me. He works on Java at Google and spends a large chunk of time being a C# and .NET expert. Obviously C# and Java are semantically close to the point of nearly interchangeable, but the devil is in the details and he seems to have them down.

  • by jimbobimbo on 2/3/15, 7:03 AM

    I envy the way he manages to balance all commitments in his life. Pretty amazing.

  • by chdir on 2/3/15, 2:35 PM

    I would vote for him as the most decent & helpful guy on Stackoverflow. I've always found his tone humble, which isn't very common these days. Really glad to have people like him around.

  • by gadders on 2/3/15, 10:25 AM

    I'm guessing this is what they mean by a 10x programmer? :-)

  • by AceJohnny2 on 2/3/15, 4:05 AM

    I'm vaguely aware of Jon Skeet from echoes from the Windows dev world, from which I've largely stayed detached.

    Can someone explain the significance of Jon Skeet, preferebly in terms of "Facts" in the style of Bruce Schneier's [1] or Jeff Dean's [2]?

    [1] http://www.schneierfacts.com/ [2] http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts

  • by j-hernandez on 2/3/15, 2:42 PM

    Nice interview, I always enjoy reading his contributions on StackOverflow. I don't always understand what even the problem at hand is, but it's just a fascinating exercise to read some of his responses and the obscure facts behind them.

    Science Fact: Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions [0]

    0: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/537093

  • by WorldWideWayne on 2/3/15, 1:49 PM

    I thought that Google engineers weren't allowed to use Windows.