[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.