[sloxy]

If a medical doctors classifies himself as world class and then posts articles about medical matters, then my expectation would be his world class-ness is evident.

This guy's not writing an opinion piece about which brand ketchup tastes best. He has published an opinion piece in which he speaks authoritatively about matters related to the domain he claims he's a world expert in.

As for the harmless exaggeration, it's not harmless. It's poison to my chosen profession.

[parzivalm]

> As for the harmless exaggeration, it's not harmless. It's poison to my chosen profession.

Now you seem to be the one exaggerating there. While yes I agree that is a crappy way of describing himself, there is no reason to start being so mean about it.

[mkirklions]

What does world class mean?

That you are good enough that people would accept your work in the United States?

[ben509]

It's typically used in sports and means an athlete or team has won championships in an international league, or a person is an Olympic athlete.

Coding is less explicitly competitive, but there is an element of competition to it. If you were a major contributor to a project that had displaced multiple international competitors, that'd clearly be world class. For example, Linus is a "world-class" coder because Linux is used all over the world and has displaced many operating systems.

[justwalt]

No less than Don Knuth’s protégé.