I'd agree with your assessment that interpersonal skills are the issue (in fact he agrees, too) and that's not something you can fix overnight.
I really think the best situation for this guy is to get out of the valley for a bit, get a job doing some very focused dev/maintenance stuff in his areas of expertise (Python/JS?) and design a personal reboot plan.
Maybe you should just refrain from judging people like this so harshly when you don't really know anything about them.
Your attitude sucks. I would never, ever want to work with you when you talk smack on people like this without knowing anything about them.
> I think there's a lot of room for boisterous, outspoken and even aggressive developers, but you really gotta prove you have the chops to earn that.
This sentence of yours strongly suggest that you think Xah Lee didn't prove he has the chops to earn being outspoken. You may even think he probably did not earn such a right at all. Even if you don't think so, the suggestion is there for all to read.
Besides, I have read a good chunk of his website. Even when he goes full insult-mode, he generally has a point.
I didn't say nor did I suggest this. I'm simply saying that if you're going to walk into a room and act like Linus you'd better have a track record like Linus.
I didn't say Xah Lee does or doesn't, particularly since I noted above that I didn't know much about him. I'm simply pointing out that if that's your style, that's what you need to back it up.
Oops. Sorry. I retract.
I think he is in some ways the prototypical hacker. He's very good at what he does, but he struggles to do anything with financial value, and he's got very bad interpersonal skills.
He's done quite a lot of Emacs work, particularly around trying to make it easier to work with. His work was very helpful to me when I was starting out with Emacs, so I've given him some money. His documentation saved me weeks of work over the years, so giving him a days wages is a no-brainer.