Of course his books and wider accomplishments show that he's very smart; he manages to explain everything he writes about, in detail, with the least amount of w

Of course his books and wider accomplishments show that he's very smart; he manages to explain everything he writes about, in detail, with the least amount of words necessary - no less, not more. In that sense, his books are a bit like "The C Programming Language" - concise, yet don't read as 'abbreviations'; but also complete, often answering the questions that pop into your head as you're reading something in the next sentence. But I only got a real appreciation for how much he truly 'masters' programming from his description of an n-dimensional data structure in the 4th edition of 'The C++ Programming Language'. There, he transfers those qualities into software design; very clearly laying out requirements, and writing a beautifully concise implementation as he goes along. There is so much to be learned from that chapter alone.