- Going into counseling, as sometimes it's just not enough. - Getting attention, as it's a distraction that can sometimes make falling back into the 'darkness' more painful. - Love, as more times than not it's easy to not be able to let go of the pain and transmit it to your loved ones and hurt them because of it.
It's easy to judge other people when you're living a sheltered life and you have some delusions of grandeur about how people with X and Y attributes should behave in a certain way that has been lodged in the back of your mind because of your upbringing or religion. The fact that you can so easily say that smart and brilliant people don't take their lives is a clear indicator that you really don't have a grasp on what being smart or brilliant is, but more important than that, it clearly shows that you have not had to go through anything as traumatizing as what this man went through.
In reality when you've gone through traumatizing events such as this, there is only one thing that will define if you're suicidal or not, and it's if you are strong enough to live with yourself, your 'darkness', and knowing someone else is either alive and unpunished, or suffered an undeserved and painful death.
I've seen stuff you could get out of a Saw movie, and sadly had to live a violent episode defending my home and loved ones (despite a middle-upper class upbringing, I did end up living on the crappiest and violent part of town on a small room with 2 other persons sharing a bed). Because of what I've lived I can tell you three things: smart/brilliant people take their lives because they can't deal with the feelings, not because they're actually dumb by some morality troll's standards; things like this mark you for life, and no amount of counseling can turn you back into someone you once where, though that doesn't mean that you can't live with the events or your decisions (In my case it gave me the most untrusting and uncaring character, which is something that affects every relationship I've had, romantic or otherwise); and people that act judgmental regarding things like this are doing so because they have this grand ego which gets fed by making others feel like they're beneath them. No one who has ever had to go through something as traumatizing as this would have the the heart (or the balls) to say the bullshit you've said.
Be more respectful and stop letting your nonsense morals talk crap of other people that deserve at least the silence of the witch-hunt people holding the pitchforks.
Honestly: How do you know? Should I invoke Alan Turing or look up suicides on Wikipedia?
I think we, who are not going through these kind of things, tend to underestimate just how damaged people can be. I'm not saying he made the right choice, but I'm definitely saying that it's not as clear cut as you imply.
The OP seems to equate 'smart' with evolutionarily successful. While there is no question that removing yourself from the gene pool before reproducing is lousy evolutionary fitness, I can certainly understand looking at the world and deciding that one just doesn't want to play that game.
For the most part I think the downvotes are because the post is offensive and lacks insight, not because people are applauding suicide.
I don't think it's a failure to contribute to point out that rational people( and here we would presume that brilliant programmers are generally rational )would conduct their lives and solve their problems rationally.
Physical trauma that occurred and ended 20 years ago is not the kind of thing a rational mind would choose suicide as a solution to.
I understand that the "feelings first" zeitgeist of modern America makes this kind of thinking unpopular, but for some reason I thought unpopularity alone was not considered an appropriate rubric to downvote on HN.
"Physical trauma that occurred and ended 20 years ago is not the kind of thing a rational mind would choose suicide as a solution to."
Childhood sexual abuse is not the kind of thing that lends itself to a rational emotional state. If you read Bill's note, you'll observe that he recognized this fact, sought help, and obtained little. Maybe all he needed was someone like you to tell him to "get more rational".
Even this is very arguable, there are plenty of perfectly rational reasons for suicide.