[jewbacca]

He's Eric S. Raymond (widely known as ESR)[1], a major contributor to and early public advocate of the open-source community[2], originator and maintainer of much enduring 80s and 90s hacker humour[3], sometimes shit-disturber[4], and libertarian borderline crank[5].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

[2] http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/

[3] http://catb.org/jargon/

[4] http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/

[5] ...not really, he's far more balanced than RMS. He's a guns-and-crypto nut, and defends his position well.

---

That he's so starstruck by contact with Knuth surprises me -- occupying, as they do for me, roughly equal mindshare in the category of "old-school computer celebrities", I figured they'd just know each-other. I guess I don't really have any model of intra-celebrity social diffusion, and that category needs to be more granular.

[mahmud]

That he's so starstruck by contact with Knuth surprises me -- occupying, as they do for me, roughly equal mindshare in the category of "old-school computer celebrities"

ESR is to Knuth what Sarah Palin is to Milton Friedman.

[statictype]

Oh, I know who he is. I occasionally peep at his blog in the way one would glance at a train-wreck before passing along.

And I don't see anything in his recent posts that would lead Knuth to conclude that he's 'doing lots of real important stuff'. The language alone sounds odd.

I still think its possible that someone is just trolling him - and certainly while he seems starstruck to receive a mail from Knuth's secretary - he's boasted before about receiving emails from Knuth.

[jewbacca]

Well specifically, he's the maintainer of INTERCAL[1], an esoteric/outright evil programming language that, from his request (if I'm not being too credulous; it's at least plausible), Knuth must find amusing. Of course he's not a Computer Scientist on the level of Knuth, but my awareness of him, at least, is as an important cultural figure in computer-aware politics (from back when this was a distinguishable perspective), and a curator of a significant chunk of the culture of hackers from a formative era, which they were both a part of, that might otherwise be left abandoned. I'd hesitate to frame him as appreciable as a philosopher to Knuth's scientist, because he's a hacker who's also made real contributions to code that is still in use today; but his essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar'[2], at the very least, was an important text in laying down, and communicating to those who may not have previously understood, an open source philosophy that we take as a given position today.

I dunno, I'm just surprised to see the lack of recognition apparent in a thread on Hacker News about someone who I think of as a notably important figure, a hacker elder. I'm not from that era, maybe I just read too much Slashdot back in the day.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL

[2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...

[mukyu]

I don't think anyone in this thread does not know who esr is.

However, the email implies that esr is currently busy doing important things.

esr hasn't done anything important in a decade. [1]

This is the disconnect--that people do not know of anything that esr is currently doing not that they do not know who esr is.

[1] Actually, TAOUP was published in 2003 so seven years, but it is still ages in this field.

[statictype]

I dunno, I'm just surprised to see the lack of recognition apparent in a thread on Hacker News about someone who I think of as a notably important figure, a hacker elder. I'm not from that era, maybe I just read too much Slashdot back in the day.

I think a lot of people are turned off by esr because of his arrogance and ego.

[mahmud]

Specially after his foray into sex instruction and his staged PR photo with a "girl". Tacky.

[sprout]

Yeah, personally I think his reaction at hearing Knuth reads his blog wouldn't really be any different from mine at hearing he reads my blog.

That said, Knuth reading my blog seems outside the realm of possibility, ESR less so.