The legends the article talks about are legends because they either started a project that blew up in popularity and/or solved a demanded problem with original code.

For most people writing software for a living that is gone. Its been gone since I started writing software 20 years ago. The goal post has moved. Its no longer about solving any problem. Its about hiring.

The distinction is massive. Most of the people doing this work will never encounter an important problem to solve or write original code. Instead they will use tools and modify templates. There is still some troubleshooting there, but no originality. Its like being a plumber. Plumbers still make good money, but they aren't engineers. Now, with AI being pushed on everybody even becoming something like a plumber is becoming a distant gap for the next generation.

The most clear exception are hobbyists, which has always been there as an exception through my years writing software. The only real distinction between most of these hobbyists and the legends is obscurity. The very real distinction between the hobbyists and less original professional is time spent practicing.

Some years ago I realized that I can just start sending emails to an OSS mailing list. Without introduction just starting to post as if I belonged there. I had already made some grammar fixes more than five years before that but I started to comment and critique submissions. And submitting my own patches. Now checking the mailing list is daily habit. Unfortunately I didn't have time to post the second version of a submission on the bus today (another documentation fix).

People, and especially in my culture, are very good at staying out of places where they do not belong through self-policing alone. Unfortunately to the point where at least I do get stuck in narrow patterns and never even consider certain opportunities.

I’ve gotten replies from authors on NYT best sellers lists, musicians, and more.

People like to be appreciated.

The exception is game programmers. With AI/engines, making games has never been easier, Steam takes a lot of the guesswork out of packaging/release, and the moat in games is taste/refinement which is very AI resistant.

Daniel Stenberg is not on the list but he is also a very active programmer on social media like LinkedIn that you can interact with.

If someone want to interact with people like Linus Torvalds, they should be aware that in his case he publicly admitted the way he interacted with other was toxic[1]. To be clear, it’s no personal attack against him, it’s about the kind of interaction that can and does occur with largely celebrated figures in general. If anything at least in that case there is some recognition of the issue, though fair credit should probably given also to all people beyond the scene who certainly made tremendous effort for this to happen.

And things like popular micro-blogging platforms are notoriously known to cause interaction going toxic[2].

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean its a nice path to thrive for everybody.

To each their own judgment, but at least consider the tradeoffs.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07229-y

Somebody sit with Fabrice Bellard and pick his brain on how he thinks, how he organizes projects, how he studies so many different domains, how he implements them, views on work-life balance etc. etc.

Basically i want a brain dump of Fabrice Bellard.

It seems like it's been around for a few years so it probably isn't vibe-coded, but I do wonder if even small services like this will inevitably be gobbled up by AI. Like I know it probably isn't the case but I've become so jaded now that I'm looking at their teams page and wonder if these are even real people.

Yes it's an amazing time for programmers but only in a "twilight of the gods" sense. The time for community passed about a decade ago, before Twitter turned into a Nazi bar and everything went entirely to shit. There's a little bit left but it's dying fast. Why would any of these people want to waste their time talking to the community that wants to assimilate their work and replace it with the mediocre shit dribbled from a Claude prompt? These people don't need your emails, they're probably already deluged with bots as it is.

But ... why?

I don't understand why I should write an email to Linus. Or Phil. Or Pete. Or Joe. I can barely keep up with the influx of existing emails as-is. Do I really want to extend to this and have to read through even MORE emails now?!