Why is it unfortunate? Or am I missing some sort of implication here? And what about black programmers? Does it matter? If so, why?
Hypothetically the author thought of “epic programmers” and only came up with white males. Women and PoC have given great contributions in our industry and are underrepresented. This could have been an opportunity for the author to learn about some and give them a bit of credit.
Can you give us some examples of programmers of "epic" repute that are women or people of color? (Or both?) I'd like to be able to bring them up when I find myself reading something that doesn't include them.
As a google employee the first person who comes to mind is Sanjay Ghemawat. Jeff Dean is upheld to mythical levels within Google but he pair programs with Sanjay who is almost unknown.
Jess Frazelle is pretty famous for her work on dockerization as well.