Conor 0:00

This is gold. Look at that. Andre, the man, the myth, a legend, taking a taking a stroll through the catalog of ADSP.

Andrei Alexandrescu 0:07

And that's why I joined the NVIDIA. And I'll tell you exactly why. I want to mooch. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by mooching.

Conor 0:28

Welcome to ADSP The Podcast, episode 68, recorded on February 15th, 2022. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bright, we interview Andre Alexandrezcu. This is part one of a two-part interview. Perfect, perfect. Alright. So you were saying that uh you went back and listened to a bunch of the episodes. We'll cut this up, so just so you know. I I put some polish, we cut things in and out, but um, what were you gonna say?

Andrei Alexandrescu 0:56

Um first of all, I should let you know that uh according to Audacity, I'm getting into like a high green zone, and sometimes if I get too excited, I'm getting into the red zone, so maybe it's a bit loudside, just a nitty bit, uh just a bit uh quieter, if that's okay with you.

Bryce 1:13

Yeah, I I think that's fine. I mean, I think I get into the red zone quite frequently. Ah, okay, good, good, good, good.

Conor 1:19

Yeah, the odds that you're louder than Bryce are zero percent.

Bryce 1:22

So so fun so fun story. Back when the the C committee would have um face-to-face meetings, I became infamous for uh my famous. That's gonna work on your infamous. This is going great. I became infamous for uh how I would use my voice at the breaks to like announce that it was the end of break. And like I would just go out and I would shout in my loudest voice, like, break's over, get back to work. And um, I have been told by some people that towards the end of break, they like move to the opposite side of room of the room. They wouldn't want to be there, yeah. They don't want to uh they don't want to have any damage to their eardrums.

Andrei Alexandrescu 2:07

Bryce is Siren song, you know?

Bryce 2:10

Yeah. Yeah, my voice, my voice goes pretty loud.

Conor 2:13

This is I can tell this is gonna be great. This is gonna be up there and in contention with uh our Sean Parent episode.

Bryce 2:19

Before we hang on, before before we we go any further, I got wrecked by Wordle today because Connor, as I'm sure you know, we had the first three letters of our word arose. We had all of them match and all of them in position, and I did not get it in two, I got it in three.

Conor 2:37

Wow. What is there even another word? What did you guess?

Bryce 2:40

It's A-R-O um I D or I-T, which was not a word that I knew. I was just I was just trying things and I didn't expect it to go through.

Conor 2:53

Alright, well, everyone, the listener, you can feel bad for Bryce. Back to Andre, though, because now Bryce has interrupted our esteemed guest twice. He was telling us about his. I actually don't know where you were gonna go. You were just telling us that you were listening to the past episodes.

Andrei Alexandrescu 3:06

I was saying that uh I was you know watching your past episodes with uh Eric Nibbler, with Sean Parent, uh Eric Niebler and his dad, it turns out. Yep. Yeah, that was pretty awesome. Um and with uh Sean and with Patricia and Chandler and all these fine folks, and they had all these awesome, interesting stories, and I was thinking, oh my goodness, what am I gonna produce here? What possible thing of interest could I ever say on this podcast?

Conor 3:34

Are you kidding? All right, well, let's we're from there, or have you thought? Wait, am I interrupting you now? Because I'm about to intercept and be like, Are you kidding? But go ahead, say what you're gonna say.

Andrei Alexandrescu 3:44

I mean, you know, here's the thing. Um I think that uh the world has gotten a bit uh polarized in the sense that you either want to hear a story where it kind of like died then came back alive, or there's no interest, right? So there's this extreme, you know. I don't want a story of like some sub-story from a kid who grew up in communist Romania. It's not like you know what's funny about communists uh growing up on the right on the wrong side of the iron curtain is you know it it wasn't it wasn't um you you were not in peril of death on a regular basis. It was just bad, like bad in a sense that you know you're like um not having good food, but you weren't you weren't really like starving to death, right? You didn't have um you know you didn't have many opportunities, you didn't have much freedom, but it was like they would kill you. The killing occurred like in the 50s, like with Stalin, the whole killing thing like became a thing uh that was um you know um uh passe, right? Uh but it became some sort of a solid existence, and it it was um, you know, my identity as uh as an Eastern European in um in America is a bit um you know what what crazy refugee stories do I have to tell? Well, none. I have like you know, I I arrived in America by means of a plane. I didn't swim, I didn't go on a log or raft or life raft, I didn't starve to almost to death and that kind of stuff. So I'm I'm afraid that your uh your listeners are gonna be like, yeah, what do I care about this guy? What's uh what stories could he possibly uh come up with?

Conor 5:22

Oh I know that is false. And I mean, I know I'm not saying that I don't believe that you came by plane and I think you came by raft. Um what I mean is that I know it's false that you don't have stories. Wait, wait, hang on.

Bryce 5:37

I just want to get back to the idea of traveling from Romania to the US by raft.

Conor 5:44

I promise the listener, I promise the listener at some point I will introduce who we're speaking to, because there's like half of you might not be C devs, but but wait, we'll let Bryce talk about his raft. What's up?

Bryce 5:56

Cross the Black Sea, go through like the Turkish Straits, and then you'd be in the Mediterranean. And then you've gotta like go across the Mediterranean, and then and then you gotta like go past Gibraltar, and then you gotta go all the way to the US. That is quite the raft journey.

Andrei Alexandrescu 6:16

Yep. And you know, the strait in Turkey has a really funny name. Do you know it?

Bryce 6:21

Uh I don't know it off the top of my head now.

Andrei Alexandrescu 6:24

Now here's the thing, Bryce, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right, so you guys maybe uh gonna help me. Dardanelis.

Bryce 6:32

That's I mean it sounds better than how I would print it.

Andrei Alexandrescu 6:34

It sounds plausible. Okay. The Dardanili strait. Yeah, that that would be a it would be a hike. It would be a hike by means, of course, of a raft.

Conor 6:43

Alright, so no raft, only planes. No raft, only planes. Roman.

Andrei Alexandrescu 6:47

And you know, there is a there is a kind of uh a true part of the story, which is when I arrived, I literally had 300 bucks on me. So I that was it. But I had friends who helped me get there and who uh had a job for me, and that was of course it made all the difference. I didn't arrive like a homeless guy in New York trying to make it on 300 bucks. So I had friends waiting for me, and uh they took me to their place, great people, and uh we worked together, you know. I I I didn't start at Papa John's, you know, unlike Chandler, I'm very uh I'm very sad to announce that uh I don't do not have a Papa John's uh pizza um you know um uh worker experience. Uh so I started as a programmer in New York in uh 1998.

Conor 7:33

In 1998?

Andrei Alexandrescu 7:34

Yep. I was already programming for a while, but um that was my first American experience.

Conor 7:40

Okay, so we're gonna we're gonna pause to introduce our guests. For those of you usually we have rough landings. We don't typically have although that that was actually that was actually the case with uh when we had Patricia and Chandler on. We didn't even realize that we had not introduced them. We just started talking Chandler just started um talking about his backyard barbecue. Anyway, so our guest today, Andre Alexandrescu, hopefully I pronounced that correctly. C devs are probably almost 100% familiar with the name.

Bryce 8:13

This man has a Wikipedia page.

Conor 8:14

Yeah, this man has a Wikipedia page. Most I actually I'm not sure if this is most famously, but the book, uh Modern C design, basically define a generation of template metaprogramming and started what ultimately has become, I don't know, constexper metaprogramm like the journey all dates back. And here's here's the sad thing. I haven't even read the book. Um that's how we could have done our research. Um, although I have I have heard, even if the book, the template metaprogramming, you're not gonna do much of it, the first two chapters, I'm not sure what's in the first two chapters, but I've heard the first two chapters are timeless and you should read those no matter what. But but so Andre was a C mogul. Uh, he'll tell us what he was doing before then, and uh has worked at Facebook, um, went on at one point. I think actually while you were at Facebook, you were working on the D language. Yep. And we'll get into this. So I'm not actually sure if you know you're one of the four horsemen of the Pacific Northwest C user group. That's a term that I came up with on a past on a past episode. Bryce, were you remarking that maybe we could hire all four of them or try and get all four of them? Don't don't tell people my strategy. But yes, yes, that's nice. Um, because we've we've got half of them. Eric Niebler, part of that other half, and then Walter Bright and Bartaj Meluski. Apparently, the four of you, I heard this from Eric. When did I have lunch with him for one of the first times? It was either at a CPP con or at a committee meeting, and he told me about, you know, how you guys used to go to the C user groups, and then you'd go out for drinks or just meet up for coffee on the weekends, and there was this era of, you know, in in 2011, I I did that with with the four.

Bryce 9:50

I mean, I don't know, I know I maybe uh minus Andre, but I was it was in Seattle for my first supercomputing conference, the the supercomputing conference, which was in Seattle that year. Um, and I somehow became aware that there was the Northwest C user group meeting up there, and I went, and I think it was at someplace on Microsoft, some Microsoft campus, and afterwards uh Walter, Eric, and I think Andre and like some other people went out to some bar somewhere and I went with them, and I was like, I'm sure, I'm sure almost none of them remember that because that was like very early in my career. That was like my the first six months of my career when I was still a little squirt.

Andrei Alexandrescu 10:32

Awesome. I wasn't there, I'd moved already.

Bryce 10:34

Right, right, right, right. So it was it was it was not the the the not all four of them, it was just Walter, Eric. Um uh wait, who's the fourth, Connor?

Conor 10:44

Uh Bartosz Malusi.

Bryce 10:45

Bartosh. I I don't know if Bartosz was there. Um no, I think he was.

Andrei Alexandrescu 10:48

I think Bartosz was the one who invited Brad Roberts might have been part of the meeting. Uh Brad was uh Amazon uh engineer, and he uh I think he retired by now.

Conor 10:56

Oh wow, we're gonna oh my I see. This is the thing. This is not the most polished introduction because I'm so excited because Yeah, it's a it's a long-winded introduction. It's yeah, it's C modern C design, and then from that, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before. Yeah, Walter Bright went and did D, and then Andre, I'm actually not sure how quickly you ended up joining in 2005.

Andrei Alexandrescu 11:18

I joined Walter.

Conor 11:20

Yeah, and then you were basically, you know, worked side by side with Walter, uh, did a ton of the you know algorithm stuff. We mentioned that yesterday in an internal meeting when we were sort of doing introductions, that the chunk by algorithm that just got into C23, the name of that comes specifically from D. And you've you've worked at Facebook, you've worked at a plethora of companies, and now you're at NVIDIA. Anyways, I'm gonna stop this long-winded introduction. You jump at, I guess I mean we can start at 1998, and then we can just go from there and uh yeah.

Andrei Alexandrescu 11:50

Um, well, uh linear storytelling, that's original. Um, it's um uh I think um there's been a number of um and I think this is important for any any uh anyone really in in and in particular any engineer to to make a few important decisions uh right and sort of to get uh to get a right um um angle. And uh one one of them was to uh to emigrate, uh to immigrate to the states. And uh turns out that that was a good decision. And uh, you know, it it it might as well be that uh of course I had like friends and parents there and a comfortable um uh career already prospects. Uh the country was getting already economically better by uh by the end of the 90s. It was um uh there's this um follow the communism in 1989, and there's been like a decade of turmoil, turmoil, but but but by like the 2000s things uh had started to improve. So and programs like um in high esteem because they would work for international companies and they would be very well paid by Romanian standards, so there was a situation. I know I know um quite a few folks who actually um chose uh to turn down offers from abroad and they they chose to live in Romania. Um so you know, one good decision was uh you know, I moved out, uh, I moved to the States, and that turned out to be a good thing. Uh so I worked uh on Wall Street for a year plus, and then I moved to a startup in Atlanta, turns out. Again, uh just by means of uh friends who were there, um and interviewing and stuff.

Conor 13:39

And are you doing C at this point?

Andrei Alexandrescu 13:42

Yeah, I was using C all through. And uh in Atlanta, uh that company was called NetZip, and it got acquired by Real Networks. So I'm not sure if you even know you it's uh it's kind of uh it predates your uh your prime. Um Real Networks was kind of a big deal back then in the 2000, year 2000, and it was the first company that did like audio over the internet and kind of internet radio and all that nonsense, and then uh they switched to video, and um I think that they became um you know they're they're still around, but they're a minor player minor player by now. So at uh Real Networks, um they bought this uh Netzip startup and I got shares. Um options actually back in the back in the day, though there was not shares. So I got options and at the time of the acquisition in January 2000, 2000 straight, my share my options were worth $400,000. Now you gotta you gotta figure out for somebody who like just uh you know two years ago had $300, that was like a pretty good return on investment on the decision to move abroad, you know. So that was uh pretty fantastic. And of course, you know, we know what followed. So January 2000 was almost like perfectly the peak of the market in March. By March, the market started to fall, and then uh in you know, essentially it all it all went to dust. And it's kind of funny how life uh organizes these things for you because um what seemed to be like the worst thing to happen turned out to have unexpected uh good consequences. For example, 2000 uh 2001 comes, um, and essentially it's like, well, you know, uh my options are worth nothing and I hate my job. It was like also like very political and whatever, so there's like a lot of like little unpleasant details about you know about what was going on, and it was all caused by the dire situation of the economy, right? So the whole tech sector was messed up back then. But um at that point I was like, well, well, it looks like I don't have much to lose. All of all of those uh good $400,000 are like uh are not in the in the books anymore. So uh and that was when I decided to join the graduate school. So I I went for my uh for my PhD. So now um you gotta appreciate that most people when they apply for a PhD, they apply to like many schools, and they there's a whole like process and everything, and uh I have no idea about all that. I I had zero understanding of the whole process. Um, so I did like like an idiot. I called like what what is the university in my city? I was in Seattle. So, what is a good university in Seattle? So, you know, somebody tells me tells me it's like ah University of Washington. Turns out University of Washington is kind of a pretty big deal, like it's a top 10 university in computer science, so but I had no idea. And the the funny thing is the fact that I had no idea was my what put me in. Because if I had any idea, I would have been like they will never want me. I had no chance in hell to uh get to your dub. Uh but because I didn't know I just applied and I made it. So then you know, the whole uh the sordid story of the next eight years was how I got my PhD in that university, and a lot has happened uh in the meantime. I wrote my second book, uh, the Cirros Condic Codic Standards book, a bunch of articles, a bunch of papers, a bunch of I got married, had a kid, um, so a lot of stuff happened concurrently with my PhD. And um all through starting 2005, there's this um unending passion for the D language, which uh I worked with uh Walter on for uh you know for so 2005 that would be like what 16 years by now? So that's a long time. And um after Facebook, I uh you know, uh sorry, after um University of Washington, I I finished uh with uh with my uh uh uh degree, which I'm very kind of it it it that was kind of another good decision that you know do you want to do a graduate degree? And for some people it's definitely not the right decision. For me, it turned out to be, so I'm you know very happy to have made that one decision. But you gotta appreciate um Connor and uh Bryce, you gotta appreciate that there maybe in in a regular day, me and any of us would make maybe a dozen or half a dozen or two dozens wrong decisions, right? But the point is they're minor, you know? So you know you make all these mistakes and little mistakes in in life, and it you know, in your code, not to mention in the code, you bugs and all that nonsense, of course. I don't write bugs in my code. I don't write code, not not in prices. Uh but if you make these like five decisions that are right, then uh a lot of things are gonna be a lot better. So it's important to figure out where the good decision should go, where you know where your decision making making uh input should go, you know. So maybe you know buy a bad car and it's it's not a great car and you can pay too much for it or whatever. It's a bad decision, but maybe it's not the worst decision and it's not something that's gonna have a huge impact. But whether you know you uh you join a company or not, whether you are going to uh go to school or stay in school or not, and uh all of these uh you know who who do you marry and who who do you have a relationship with, even what friends you keep and don't keep, these are kind of important decisions that um need to you know you need to invest a lot in you know a lot of your mental uh kind of awareness into. So, anyway, so uh after um uh so straight after my PhD, I I went with uh with Facebook, where I've been I've I've had a good time. I don't think I've been ever at full potential. Uh Facebook is a face-to-face company, and I was one of the very few engineers remote. So I was at maybe 70% of capacity. The whole culture was not remote at all back then. And I'm I'm not sure what uh you know what it's like right now, but back then it was like a rarity to have any employee who's remote. So, you know, it it was a friction. So I had like um maybe 70% of the potential. So I kind of you know I've been there and it's it's been uh it's been a good experience. Um it could have been better, but I could have I could have could have done more, but uh the whole circumstance with remote work um was so so. And then I became an independent, you know, I kind of quit left Facebook and I became an independent consultant and I got really tired of it, which is weird. Um like there are people for whom being independent and kind of just doing uh training, consulting for other companies, and you know, it's good. For me, it's not, and I figured out why. And that's why I joined NVIDIA, and I'll tell you exactly why. I got sick of it because I want to mooch. And I I'll explain exactly what I mean by mooching. I want to mooch. What I mean is I want to mooch intellectually off of other smart people. I want collaborations with folks who are you know, as a consultant, you you're by definition the the person who's uh giving. Right? So, like, so we have this really difficult problem, so we're gonna bring in a consultant, right? Or our people need C ⁇ training, or they need algorithms training, or they need performance, high performance computing training, and we're gonna be bring a trainer. So by definition, the trainer's uh or consultant's activity is solitary, so you prepare a loan and then you give, right? You you share. You uh it's an you know you you output value, right? And if you don't output value in enough value, you're not a good trainer or consultant. But as uh you know, when you work within an organization with someone else, it's uh you get too much, it's uh bidirectional, it's input and output, right? So you get to uh Enter these collaborations with folks, many of whom can be better than you, and you get to learn and uh share at the same time, and that's why uh that's why I was very excited to join NVIDIA because so many great people are here. Um I was actually surprised to see, like, even kind of had no idea you're at NVIDIA, like until like the day before yesterday. Uh, so it's I'm not kidding. I knew I knew of Bryce uh because Eric mentioned it. Eric uh was the first whom uh kind of uh I got in touch with about uh about NVIDIA, and you know it's it was one of those things like wait a second, so Eric is at NVIDIA, Eric is a great guy, NVIDIA sounds like a cool company. I didn't know much about it back then. That's huh, so you know let's let's do this because uh looking at my at my life as a as a solitary consultant what was not very exciting. It you know, you get blase, you get like, ah, you know, I gotta kind of yeah, yet another course. Yeah, yeah, of course. It's good money, but it's uh just uh you don't you don't get to learn, you don't get to mooch, right? So mooching is a keyword here, folks.

Conor 23:09

We're gonna we're gonna have to put the that's gonna be the start of the episode. Is uh why did I join NVIDIA? To mooch. Yes. And then people are gonna be confused for 15 minutes until they get to the part where the follow-up.

Andrei Alexandrescu 23:22

Yeah, so it's it's it's kind of funny how this whole thing works. Um, and uh things like um uh this need to learn have a lot to do with it, and there are things that enter in the picture, like uh you know, features that I think are important for uh for any person. Things like uh humility, right? So I think humility is overlooked nowadays as uh as a human quality. Everybody wants to be like self-uh, whatever, self-what's the word, uh self-confident and like uh self-affirming and all of these um um outgoing qualities, but humility I think is very important for a programmer. And humility, among other things, means uh for for an for an engineer is uh um kind of having a good recognition that there are a lot of people you can learn from and a lot of uh a lot of things you don't know, and um figuring out what you don't know and what you want to know and what you know how to get there is is uh is a very important part of your development as uh as an engineer. So um yeah, so humility I think is uh is an interesting quality that uh should not be uh should not be overlooked.

Conor 24:31

Yeah, I think isn't there um Kate Gregory gave a talk. I want to say the title of it was Emotional Code. But one of the if it's that's not the talk, I'll link it in the show notes. I'm pretty sure it is.

Andrei Alexandrescu 24:41

Kate is awesome, yes.

Conor 24:42

Yeah, and one of the points she makes in that is like you need to be kind.

Andrei Alexandrescu 24:46

Yep.

Conor 24:47

Like when you program, because and it's not even like necessarily to your coworkers, it's to your future self. Like, you know, in the moment you can have all the context, you understand the problem. But like take take a step back and like think about future you, and that sort of ties into the humility thing, because like uh if you're just you know, oh I know what this is doing, blah blah blah, you write it, and then yeah, yeah, you you can tell, like you read code and you can tell how the person uh writing it felt and kind of what they were thinking.

Andrei Alexandrescu 25:13

And I I can I can read code and as this guy had a really good time writing this code, like they had fun with the language, they had a good time and it shows and it it it uh it's um you know it's this uh good disposition that you it's um contagious and you get like a uh you know, oh wow, that's really fun, so I like it. And you get code that is like, oh my god, I can't believe I got this to work and I hate it, and you you can see that hatred in the code as well. And indeed, like kindness is a very good, it's a very good quality for uh and a good disposition to put yourself uh in when you're code. And by the way, Kate is the the perfect person to teach that kind of stuff because she is kind.

Conor 25:53

Yeah, no, definitely. So what should we? I mean, I'm definitely curious to hear more about the heydays of Niebler, Alexandrescu, Bright, and Bartosz.

Andrei Alexandrescu 26:07

Yep.

Conor 26:08

But uh I don't want to completely commandeer. Bryce, do you do you before we hop to that?

Bryce 26:13

No, no, no, no. I I got I got a thing too, but but let's do let's do your thing first.

Conor 26:18

I got a thing.

Andrei Alexandrescu 26:19

You know, I want to take this a different place. Okay. I want to do this.

Conor 26:22

Or yeah, you drive, you drive. I want to confess something. Uh oh. Here we go. This is gonna be our best episode ever.

Andrei Alexandrescu 26:29

I also want to ask you, and uh essentially like by extension, your audience, like you know, all of us would you know I have a I'm I'm having an open question for you know everybody. Um what's the how many of you have the imposter syndrome?

Conor 26:47

Bryce is not.

Andrei Alexandrescu 26:49

You guys, you guys are good, you're immune.

Conor 26:52

I definitely have it. Bryce and I have had this conversation. Bryce is from Niyaka, he's a Niaka, and uh he does not well actually I'll I should let Bryce answer.

Bryce 27:00

I I I I I definitely think I don't one of the way reasons that like I believe this is I like talking with like Connor or some of my other friends about like their first interactions with like big figures in the C community um or like on the committee um made me realize how like just completely unintimidated I am by people. Here's the best analogy that I can give you. When I worked at LSU, I worked under Hartman Kaiser, who's a great C ⁇ programmer and who was very charitable in mentoring me early in my career, I used to, when I needed to go talk with Hartman about something, or maybe I didn't even have something specific to talk about, but I would just go into his office, I would just barge him, and I would just go sit down in the chair in his corner. And if he was doing something, you know, I wouldn't like necessarily interrupt. Some sometimes I would. After about six months of working there, he pointed out to me that, like, you know, you just like you just you don't even ask if you can come in. If the door's closed, you just barge in. Just like you own the place. And I'm just that way about everything. I just feel like I belong everywhere. But Connor, Connor, you've you've talked in the past.

Conor 28:22

Yeah, so Bryce, admittedly, is not representative, is very special. I I mean, I'm not I don't think we've ever talked about this on the podcast, but I live I don't actually I don't say that I suffer from imposter syndrome. Um I just say that I have it. Like um a part of the reason that I spend so much time consuming, you know, podcasts and and lectures and CPP con talks and other languages is because like I feel like I started late because I I did something else early in my career and I feel like I'm playing catch up with everyone, which admittedly I think I've caught up, but like I just I have this perpetual not fear, but just how like even at every level you end up being in meetings where people are talking and assuming that you have a certain core set of knowledge that you don't. And like I think part of being a senior engineer is having uh feeling comfortable enough to like ask sort of not the stupid questions, but the questions that you're work you're thinking in your head, oh, everyone else knows the answer to it. And that's something that Bryce and I have talked about. That you know, half of what Bryce does in meetings these days is is, you know, sorry, can you slow down? I don't I don't know what you're talking about. Can you please explain that? Whereas like like that is like the difference between like certain levels of engineers is like having the confidence to like, I know enough that I know that like this is is a question that needs to be asked without being afraid that you're gonna look like an idiot uh for pointing out that like you don't have something that it seems like people are like, oh, they've they've assumed that I know this.

Bryce 29:43

Part of that is because like when you're a senior engineer or when you're in more so when you're in a leadership role within a tech org, or maybe just leadership role in general, like it's not your job to know. Like I shouldn't know the answer to that because if I if I knew that, then like I that would mean that I spend a whole bunch of time focusing on that instead of focusing on the other things that I was supposed to focus on. Like the person who, you know, like there's somebody in my team who's like it's their job to know that, and it's my job to know to ask them. And then like it's sort of both of our jobs for them to be able to transmit the useful, like the thing that I need to know about what they're doing or about that thing to me. Does that make sense?

Andrei Alexandrescu 30:22

It does. And you know, Bryce, it seems to me like you're you have you're an unusual combination of uh uh sociable, gregarious guy, and and you know, the introspective guy you need to be to in order to write code. So that's uh that's pretty awesome.

Bryce 30:36

That that I think I like to think of myself as that, yeah.

Andrei Alexandrescu 30:39

That's rare. And Connor, you know, you do have a bit of like yeah, like 0.1% of uh kind of imposter syndrome, but dude, you're a happy you're a happy go lucky guy. You know, I'm like, you know, I'm listening to what you say about your feelings and stuff. Man, you're you're a little kid. Let me tell you what imposter syndrome is like.

Conor 31:01

Okay, so yeah, here now we're gonna get educated.

Andrei Alexandrescu 31:03

Uh you know, so I have this feeling that um, and I'll I'll be very honest here, like this is like therapy, man. This is therapy. Um I have the feeling that for example, I was interviewing, so you know one of my interviews with NVIDIA was with uh Bryce himself, right? And I was seriously considering on of talking myself down during the interview. I was like, because everybody's like, oh yeah, so here's the thing. So you know, I put together this resume, which is like like surgery, man. It's like you know, it's like uh heart live life hard surgery for me to write a resume because the resume must look good in the resume, right? And uh it's very difficult for me to um to talk about myself in these like uh overly optimistic terms. So then I was thinking, like, uh, there's this interview, and it turns out that the interviews were very um friendly, like you know, I didn't get us like hard questions. Nobody came to me like said, you know, resolve, like solve uh P equals MP, you know, or whatever. So nobody came with the hard questions to me. They're like uh actually nice and kind of trying to try and sell the company, tell me what they do, and that kind of stuff. And I was thinking, I should tell them that actually I'm not that good as they think I am from my resume because the resume is too nice, you know, and that kind of stuff. And uh in the end, like NVIDIA made made me this offer, and you know, they said, Um, oh, uh, we uh you interviewed for um senior research scientists, but we think you're good for principal uh research scientists. I was like, are you sure? Are you sure you meant that? So so it was very funny. In the end, I made a pact with myself. I told myself the following: I think I didn't lie during my interview. I think uh the resume is actually factually the facts in there are at least like correct. There's no lie, there's no um kind of you know big lie in there, right? Oh my god, big lie. Why did I say these words? So there's no like uh ostensible lying in there. So you know they had all the information at in hand when they made the you know when they made the decision to make the software, so I'll go with it. So here I am, here we are, you guys. But I think um I think this is uh this is uh you know a huge uh a huge thing on uh on my uh on my shoulder here. And uh I I noticed that many uh many other folks have it. That's why I wanted to open uh open up about it, and maybe other folks can relate to that kind of stuff. Maybe not many can. Go ahead.

Bryce 33:38

I I certainly well while I certainly feel very comfortable in tech communities and I've never felt like I don't belong. Um I have, you know, I I the past few years I've switched into more of a leadership role at work and less of like a day-to-day engineering role. Um, and I think I'm I'm not the best programmer by a long shot. Um, and I certainly think I feel some amount of inadequacy from that. Like I have some days where I'm like, did I do anything of value or am I just like am I just like an executive producer that sticks my names on things?

Andrei Alexandrescu 34:17

Right.

Bryce 34:18

Um and and I think like like even when I was programming 100% of the time, then I've had like a different feeling of inadequacy where I would be like, I spent the past three months working on X thing, and was that really valuable? Like Yeah, it becomes trivial to you.

Andrei Alexandrescu 34:33

Yeah, you know everything about it, it becomes trivial to you, but for everybody else is actually, oh, this is kind of like real heavy stuff. And it was like, no, it's trivial. I mean, you know, I I yeah, I know it inside now out by now. Yeah.

Bryce 34:44

And and it's like one of those, I think it's especially like given you know, we as software programmers are very well compensated. Um, and you know, sometimes like I think I question like, are we just like very overpaid? Um, and like I think I sort of intellectually understand how I provide value to my company and uh at least on paper provide some form of value to society. Um, but you know, I think that um especially for people that set high goals for themselves, um, you also can be really tough on yourself, um, and you can feel like you're not doing enough.

Andrei Alexandrescu 35:26

And I think these are good questions questions to ask oneself uh as a programmer, like you know, am I overpaid? And sort of by definition, because it's a market economy, you're not. So by by a very simple definition of supply and demand, you're not. You may consider yourself lucky as much as like an NBA player may consider or like kind of baseball. I just read this thing about baseball. It turns out like 90% of the the quality of a pitcher is like genetic, you just can't train it. It's just you're born with it or you're not, and you're either a great pitcher or you know, also RAM, you know. Um, so you know, may consider yourself lucky, have like this uh this particular thing that people uh people want and need. And by the way, um Bryce, that brings me to the you know the not the second because it's it's actually the most important. The reason I I the first reason I joined NVIDIA was because I think NVIDIA is where the action is in com in computing, and I think um I think you know we have humanity, like for the lack of a of a more um modest word, is facing these big problems, and you know, climate, and you know what do we do is like all the plastic and you know energy and that kind of stuff. Like, you know, how do we solve these big problems? And it seems to me that AI is a big part of it, and you know, I'm not an expert in AI, I I've done some, but I I can't consider myself on the forefronts of uh of artificial intelligence, but at least I I can provide shovels, you know. I I can actually provide tools to people who um who work on these important problems, and um it's actually fascinating uh uh to witness how Nvidia has this um um breadth, you know, from hardware. Oh, actually, we own the compiler, we can introduce that feature if we need to, you know, which is kind of amazing because no other company, most other companies are like, well, we have GCC, and you know, by the way, you you need to use like version 9 because that's where we are right now. So uh I think uh NVI is where the action is in computer science and in important problems to be solved. Um, you know, not to mention like things like self driving, like you know, uh that would uh lift a lot of issues for humankind if we solve like uh self driving the you know to perfection.

Conor 37:48

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.