I think he was at UC Berkeley at a time in the 90s and dropped out into industry when he would have been exposed to a rosy, elitist, R&D tilted view of programm

I think he was at UC Berkeley at a time in the 90s and dropped out into industry when he would have been exposed to a rosy, elitist, R&D tilted view of programming. Where one might both hear myths and have social contact with some 70s-80s giants. This would be very different experience than someone bumping around in the equivalent of b2b/enterprise software of that era...