That's not what I get from it. I think Bret is creating amazing things because he's doing something different from the crowd, he's worked hard on it over a period of many years, his standards of quality are extremely high, and he's spent even more years developing the skills (programming and visual design, in this case) needed to make it work. (And he's pretty smart, too, which is kind of a multiplier to the above items.)

Building off of your own creations and 750¢ will get you a cup of coffee. Build off other people's creations where you can. If you're doing something different from the crowd, sooner or later you'll get to a point where you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you have to be able to do that or you'll hit a wall. But it's far from sufficient.

"he's worked hard on it over a period of many years, his standards of quality are extremely high, and he's spent even more years developing the skills" - completely agree with that too. However, just view this as pre-requisites to building work that is so good that no other building block will suffice. Tangle would not have evolved if not building off Magic Ink and other work. This article would not have been nearly as meaningful without Tangle and the other visualization patterns he created in past.