3 ms·

Based on the results of his labor: he produced a stable piece of software that millions rely on every day. Myself included.

• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  • scott_s 13y ago
    That is not the results of his labor. That is the means by which he achieves those results. There is an enormous difference. You're assessing the technical state of his project, and confusing that with its actual impact on the world. They are two different things. I call him a "talented developer" because he has successfully developed and maintained (for two decades) a stable piece of software that is the base infrastructure on millions (billions?) of computer systems around the world. Millions of other developers rely on his work for their own work. I'll grant that maybe he has done this despite his engineering skills. But his software is a success by any reasonable measure, and I think it takes talent to achieve that. I love code. I get an enormous pleasure of well engineered code. I appreciate code for its own sake. But code also serves a purpose, and I refuse to believe that someone whose code is so enormously successful somehow did so by accident, without talent.