I'm not sure you're actually being honest in your examples. Carl Sagan, sure, but Feynman was rumored to be extremely arrogant in his technical discussions. Lin

I'm not sure you're actually being honest in your examples. Carl Sagan, sure, but Feynman was rumored to be extremely arrogant in his technical discussions. Linus is known for his giant flames on the mailing list. Dijkstra was impolite at best. Maybe we just think our idols were always nice and helpful because we want them to be?