The last time he tried to contribute code was more than a little embarrassing.
He managed to be on the ground at the right time for the whole free software and hacker culture thing, but as far as actual coding goes, he's nothing special.
Why did you feel it neccesary to criticize his coding skills when we are discussing a semi-humorous piece of writing though? Does Reymond's skill or lack thereof these days effect whether the Unix Koans are worthwhile? If there's something wrong or inaccurate in them surely you could point that out rather than proceeding straight to criticizing their source.
I'm having trouble understanding your comments here as anything other than defensiveness or elitism.
Whether or not he is a good programmer or not is sort of irrelevant. I think he exaggerates his position as "spokesperson of hackers everywhere", and it is occasionally annoying (although more often I do enjoy his writing).
What connore said, that and hackerne.ws appears to be turning into a rather uncritical bunch of cheerleading, rather than any real sensible evaluation of what's in front of them.
This community is starting to feel more like slashdot and TechCrunch collaborated on a sister site than a bastion of valuable conversation.
When was the last time he tried to contribute code and how was it embarrassing? Actually, you'll need more than one example. You may well be right, but until you provide evidence, your assertions are baseless ad-hominem and I think less of you, not him.
Hey, come on... fetchmail deleted a lot of my mail back when I used POP3 over dialup. Without fetchmail, who would have been motivated enough to write offlineimap!?
He managed to be on the ground at the right time for the whole free software and hacker culture thing, but as far as actual coding goes, he's nothing special.