Aside from the fact that this guy has produced some decent software, I can't believe that hardware/software configurations of random people is interesting discussion matter.
'X uses brand Y hardware, that must be a factor in his success, so if I buy brand Y as well I'll stand a better chance at success'
Never mind that 'X' would probably make a go of it given nothing but a teletype and the people that emulate 'X' couldn't make good use of a cluster with 50 nodes and a wall sized display.
It's not the hardware that matters, it's the guys & girls using it that make the difference.
That's true and there's really nothing wrong with that. Being a hobby guitarist I feel this is very similar to many guitarists and other musicians. A guitarist doesn't want a guitar that's just nice sounding and good quality, it has to look good. If you feel your instrument has a certain "mojo" it can help you get in an inspired mood more easily. If you have instrument you don't like you can't perform at your best. A jazz guitarist might not be happy about playing a guitar that looks like it's made for heavy metal no matter what it sounds like.
Sometimes when you're passionate about something, tools are not just tools. No one needs Armani suit to protect themselves from cold, no one needs a ferrari to get from one place to another and no one needs a Gibson Les Paul to play guitar.
If someone can be more productive because working on a Macbook Pro makes them feel more like a Rock Star Developer than working on a PC with Windows XP, I don't see anything wrong with that.
An example: Kevin Kelly runs a blog called "Cool Tools" that is about, as the name implies, tools people use that are unusually good at what they do. When I read this: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004652.php , I immediately bought one, loved it, and wrote this post: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/04/highly-recommended-the-best-b... .
I agree with the DP -- some of this stuff is fashion -- but not all of it is.
However, about half of the interviews on there are some variation on "Apple laptop, Apple monitor, standard Apple suite of applications + some others", which does wear thin after a while.
[1] http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/
Why would successful people tending to choose a certain brand "wear thin"? What should they be using?
I seem to remember one of my friends saying that someone at their work uses a foot peddle for Esc (as a vim user).
So it's clearly a knowledge sharing plus.
It happens to be based around pseudo-famous people, but this makes it more readable than just a sample of coders with variances
Also, Linus doesn't really code anymore; he just types `git merge` until his fingers fall off. (or at least that's my understanding, I'm nowhere near being on the kernel team)
Yeah, that's pretty accurate: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...