So PHD in computer science, wrote programming books still recommended by very smart people 30 years after the fact, launched, ran and sold successful startup, and now successful VC is... ordinary? People like Peter Norvig say "On Lisp" is one of the best books on lisp! I'm in the software acquisition business, so I talk to founders getting ready to exit every month. That set of combined successes is most emphatically not ordinary.
I find it very strange that people are voting this down. I mean seriously, we're talking about whether someone writing about development is "ordinary"... Given the above credentials, you're seriously arguing that PG is in the same category as ordinary random dev writing programming articles? Seriously? He's just not. That's just wrong. He's got stellar academic and business credentials - that combination is not common. I guess haters gonna hate and all that.