"my new goal is to live a better life. In the end open-source doesn’t pay the bills so it’s best to focus on other things if you can, or if you just enjoy the project then that’s cool."
IMO he's still a "rockstar". It's just the Node and JS community that hypes everything disproportionally (they used to at least). The fact that he single-handedly built Apex (https://github.com/apex/apex) show that he's still prolific, and a programmer of note.
There's a similar story for Sindre Sorhus, who moved on from the JS community to Swift.
It pays the bills for the business minded folks who sell it. Imagine any other industry of craftsman who worked countless hours building stuff that profited everyone but themselves while they complain about H1-B's taking their jobs.
They give their work away for free while complaining someone else is willing to work for even less.
IMO he's still a "rockstar". It's just the Node and JS community that hypes everything disproportionally (they used to at least). The fact that he single-handedly built Apex (https://github.com/apex/apex) show that he's still prolific, and a programmer of note.
There's a similar story for Sindre Sorhus, who moved on from the JS community to Swift.