I've met him. His desk was a couple meters away from mine while I was working on Google Wave, and he was working on early versions of Go. Over 6 months or so I had a lot of little interactions with him. He's an interesting guy. He's quiet and hard working, but he has some great stories. And lots of strong opinions that he's spent a long time thinking about.

I agree with the GP. Calling someone you've never met "a massive prick" with no evidence is rude and pretentious. Especially given how much he's contributed to computing.

He is a bit of a contrarian - but so what? All the interesting people are. There's a lot of daylight between someone being "a bit of a contrarian" and being "a massive prick". One does not imply the other.

You don't have to like Go. I sure don't. But have some respect for the people who have poured their lives and souls into making computing what it is today. Our industry wouldn't exist without them.

That's a bit different to how he has to deal with contemporary compsci nerds. And, it's very old. We're talking about a 40 year old story.

I attended my share of Unix User Group meetings. All of the names had people ride point for them at drink time, adoration is tedious.