Regardless of what you think of ESR's personality, politics or hacking skills, I found this to be a pretty good read.
If ESR can write a really good software development book, why do some people thinks ESR can't code a damn?
If ESR can write a really good software development book, why do some people thinks ESR can't code a damn?
He compares himself to Stallman and Torvalds without having anything nearly as impressive as an OS kernel, C compiler or debugger.
I will say though, that he's good at introspecting on code and articulating points about programs better than most (hence the high quality of the book)
Does he compare his hacking abilities to Stallman and Torvalds?
My impression is that he considers himself a tribal elder, and compares himself to Stallman and Torvalds in that respect. But that's not quite the same.
Writing a good tech book requires deep understanding of a subject.
Writing good software takes discipline, creativity, and (interestingly) not necessarily a particularly deep analytical understanding of underlying concepts. People have written truly excellent software on poor CS foundations.
Edit: Yes, it was written by a guy named Carl Harris and ESR took it over when Harris no longer wished to maintain it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetchmail
But my point was not so much that he's a bad developer but that his software resume is not as impressive as those he compares himself to.