I've never met Markus Persson, but its obvious from reading his tweets and posts that he is a good person. If anyone deserves the success he's had, its him.
Indeed. Arrogant people get their requests fulfilled more often than humble people because they push for it, and many people who have the power to give that stuff are either arrogant and depise humble people or humble and intimidated.
I'm not so sure that he is entirely a good person or worth this level of praise. He spends a lot of time apologizing for Twitter drama that he invents, and it seems like he has the tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
The Yogscast debacle comes to mind. For those that are unaware, Yogscast, one of the biggest promotional engines sending traffic to Minecraft, went to Minecon on their own dime and did an autograph panel. Notch responded by eviscerating them on Twitter for, among other things, wishing to be helped out financially for their appearance (which cost them quite a bit, and, let's be honest, Mojang is not broke; Mojang also sold the rights to broadcast Yogscast's own show without asking). This was all based upon drama invented in Notch's head, and he had to profusely apologize later.
It seems like Notch goes out of his way to find drama. However good of a person he is tends to be undone by his occasionally childish behavior.
This comment thread is about this blog post. Given what he has revealed about himself and his family, and the way he has revealed it, he absolutely deserves praise, if only for the courage of putting pen to paper to express it (figuratively speaking, of course). He has shared something that I'm sure he has kept very close to himself.
He went through what is most certainly the most painful thing one can possibly experience (the death of a loved one by their own hand). You are trivializing something that is both moving and a show of great courage on his part. Now is not the time for personal criticism. Please, allow him whatever therapeutic benefit he can get by writing his post, and save your trivial criticisms for another post; most likely, (admittedly, I don't know you) he has suffered more from this than you ever have about anything.
I'm pretty certain that was a misunderstanding, not in any way malevolent.
Do you really think he is trying to find drama? That makes no sense at all. He is inexperienced at being famous and communicating publicly. That's all.
People like you are extremely intolerant and grating to me. This is a non-issue, and you make it into a big deal.
You have not been trolled. I, too, laud him for the post, I just don't like Hacker News getting carried away and comparing him to Jesus incarnate. As for the appropriateness of the timing, I was responding to a comment that extrapolated from this blog post to reflect upon him as a person, so it's unfair to tell me "this isn't the time" but not the person I'm responding to.
It's also fairly condescending to assume based on my opinion that I've never experienced pain on Notch's level. Buddy, you have not experienced pain on my level.