Ask HN: How good a programmer is Eric S. Raymond?

5 points by DC-3 8y ago ↗ HN

As far as I can ascertain, Eric S. Raymond is considered by many to be a statesmanlike figure in Unix culture, to be uttered in the same breath as Linus, Richard Stallman, Ken Thompson, and Dennis Ritchie. Yet while all these figures have groundbreaking software (Linux, Emacs, Unix, C) to their name, Raymond has effectively no notable software to his name at all.

I understand the influence of CatB - but is there evidence to suggest that ESR is genuinely an excellent programmer, or is he simply a mediocre developer with a skill for spinning a yarn?

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greenyoda 8y ago ↗

Here's a list of the software he's written or worked on:

http://www.catb.org/esr/software.html

For example, he wrote the 'giflib' library, which is used by a lot of software (browsers, etc.) to handle GIF files. And he's contributed to several Python libraries. So it seems he's quite an accomplished programmer.