[lmm]

The recent stories from Dustin Curtis have given me a lot more respect for DHH. Sure, he's not solved world hunger, but he's written a major, publicly useful library/framework, and he has paying clients who appreciate the work he does (in my limited experience a lot of consulting work is "easy" by software industry standards - but to a client with no expertise having someone who can do this stuff is a godsend. They don't pay you to solve hard technical problems, they pay you to integrate with their terrible systems and handle their lack of process). He's made the world a better place; perhaps in a small way, but few of us can hope for better.

And it's understandable that he gets a bit defensive, even angry, when unprofitable funded companies are seen to be "worth" more. I've been there and you get tired of having every customer ask "why are you charging more than company X", the real answer to which is "because we're an actual business making a profit, not a bunch of SV hipsters burning investor cash as fast as they can".