I know, and I rewrote my post several times before submitting it, trying to minimize the harshness. But the pattern with Granger is pretty obvious, isn't it? Grandiose ambitions, over-commitment, and a resulting failure to ship.
LightTable and Eve are still very influential and inspiring even if they aren't successful. I am personally glad they existed, as they provide experience and lessons for future efforts.
Most of them a con men, selling something they know will never work, especially on kickstarter and the like.
This was nothing unique, it's something people have been trying to do since computers were invented and it has failed every single time. COBOL was conceived with the idea that people in other disciplines would be able to do their own programming.
When there is every reason to think you will fail and you ask people for money to try then you start to look a lot like those con men.
A less asshole-y phrasing would be "I wonder if he had reduced his ambitions somewhat, it might have had more chance to succeed".