His advice was that given ten years almost anybody can become a professional software developer.
He's one of the people I've never met/barely interacted with who are dear to me.
He must be over 70 now, and it's been a few years he's neglected his- in past times- lively blog.
He used to be in financial straits, tried to launch a cultural initiative to draw support for Load Bearing Internet People like himself:
http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/
He's still got a subscriberstar if you're looking to lighten your pocket.
I particularly like his series of posts about his modern rewrite of Crowther and Woods' Adventure, starting here: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7536
[0] It helps that ESR's arguments where largely practical in nature rather than ideological. In particular, he coined the aphorism, "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow".
Edit: O boy, I accidentally read "a brief history of hackerdom". Now to dive into what I actually meant to read