Mathematica is absolutely incredible and everyone who calls themselves a programmer should own a copy, learn how to use it, and internalize its philosophy.
However, I too find his self-aggrandizing intolerable.
Sentences like "Looking back at its documentation, SMP was quite an impressive system, especially given that I was only 20 years old when I started designing it." Just make me dislike him. Was his age really necessary there? He already mentioned his age a few paragraphs up in a sentence that was far less objectionable.
Perhaps it made him a "better" programmer but claiming to have made him a better "man" is a bit exaggerated.
I guess he's super excited about how far he's come and how programming helped him attain a certain level of satisfaction and happiness in his professional life.
He may have better understanding of people who make software. His understanding of gays doesnt have a problem, his perception of gays has. According to his twisted value system they are bad people. However his understanding of software people is not clouded by his values.
In any case I am only trying to defend him because I saw people just read his name from article title and decided they should not read it full.
So please go ahead read what he has to say, then decide if he is correct or not instead of judging article beforehand.
My 2 cents.
I don't know this guy, and I haven't read any of his other stuff, so this isn't a judgement of him, it's just how I interpret the tone and content of the article itself, but...
It sounds like a rant by a corporate code-pusher who's never done anything particularly complex or sophisticated, and feels defensive about the security of his career.
Maybe that's just me. Again, I don't know this guy. I'm not passing judgement. That's just what I pick up when I read between the lines.
He's just a couple years older than me, and the brightest point in my entire programming career wouldn't even show up as a minor bullet point on the list of stuff he's done.
Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father?
I think people too often miss the significance of their own existence, independent of their relatively brief tasks and accomplishments. I certainly do not mean to belittle or speak poorly of anyone's accomplishments, but the importance of simply being is so significant and people so rarely appreciate that significance.
I had similar thoughts while reading the piece. Especially the statement that he "is still the best programmer at his company". One wonders if that is something he said about himself or if it is something the other coders said. Without further context, it feels pretty strange.
I disagree completely. His signoff line about a green on black terminal- _must be a hacker_ just struck me as arrogant and dated.
Programmers aren't some mythical beast people hear about but don't see. Open source software is usable by your grandmother.
Obviously there are exceptions to both sides, but I found it very conflicting reading his article with so many things that (to my interpretation, at least) read as though he was trying to put himself on a badass pedestal.
Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father?
Maybe he just knew the audience that he was speaking to. After all, if it wasn't for that he probably wouldn't be linked here.
I'm confused by this comment, where in the article did you get the impression he was naturally talented and hardworking? For most of his academic career in high school and undergraduate, it seems like he had a difficult time learning programming, and doing well academically.
Interesting that the guy was apparently not a good coder:
"He is not a gifted programmer — according to Watt and Toey, in fact, he can barely write simple code — but by all accounts he can understand systems and fillet them with singular grace."
Well, it's not entirely surprising to hear an anecdote about a young (19 year old), brilliant programmer arrogantly dismissing legitimate possibilities.
> 27 year old straight white male programmer
and
> I am merely an extraordinary man and nothing more
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