[michaelt]

The proviso there is "to get fame"

Technical accomplishments only make you famous if people know about them - if you want to become Joel Spolsky or Bruce Schneier or John Carmack or Donald Knuth then either you're going to have to publicise the evidence of your brilliance, or someone else is.

Plenty of people don't particularly pursue fame - you can make plenty of money and get plenty done without it. But if fame is your goal and you hope to achieve it through code alone, I challenge you to name the maintainer of grep or openssl or the linux kernel bluetooth subsystem without looking it up :)

There are other routes to getting your accomplishments known, of course. Sid Meier and Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds aren't famous for blogging.

[watwut]

Neither John Carmack nor Donald Knuth nor Bruce Schneier became famous because of blogging. The only one who became famous for blogging was Joel Spolsky who blogged more as technical manager or entrepreneur then engineer. Joel Spolsky also blogged when light management blogs were rare and would show up high in google search. It was something new back then, it is not something new now.

[michaelt]

Knuth and Schneier both wrote highly influential books, though, which I would argue are examples of programmer plus writing skills equals famous programmer

[watwut]

Which is not the same thing as having blog. It is completely different. They also wrote under different conditions as blogs are written - book was paid work and publishers pass your books through editors.

Also, Bruce Schneier is not a programmer. He can code, but the bulk of his work is not programming.

[kubanczyk]

As they say, if you are trying to get rich and famous, instead try to just get rich. Chances are it will suit you pefectly.