There is one other way in which you are not a failure, and I am sure that I am not alone in thinking about it: I have been reading your words for 15 years, from the time I was a baby CS major. That's really true, e.g., here[1] is a comment from 11 years ago where I mentioned that a lisp you wrote for the Apple //e informed a lisp for the Apple //e that I wrote.

Especially in my college years (2009-2013, ish), the world seemed smaller, and to me, a lot of what you wrote was like looking through a keyhole into the real world. Grown-ups can apparently write lisp at JPL[2]! Google was chaotic[3][4][5][6] to work in 2000, especially if you commuted from Burbank. A name change[7]. And, variously, surveillance, more lisp stuff, etc. Now I'm an adult and I still haven't professionally written lisp, but I'm glad to have read about it anyway.

Anyway, it might surprise you to learn that when I think of your writing, though, I think of your HN comments first. There is a kind of influence that you can only get with a steady, unthanked build-up of seemingly-small contributions over a long period of time. In the right place they compound. I probably cite you to other engineers once a month or so.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199857#6200414 [2]: https://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20080212170839/https://xooglers.... [4]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090408003924/http://xooglers.b... [5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090408013612/http://xooglers.b... [6]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090408003913/http://xooglers.b... [7]: https://flownet.com/ron/eg-rg-faq.html