There are a lot of peoples blogs that are quoted on Hacker News that have a lot better content than Jeff Atwood, but are not as well written or presented as Jeff Atwoods pieces. If something isn't well presented it tends to get mostly ignored.
The comment about selling software is a bit silly coming from someone who uses Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio (paid for software). He never jumped the shark, he has always made comments that haven't been well thought out.