I totally get it. I don't know how you originally got into programming, but imagine you were good at it during your early teens, like many of us, and like Aaron. Now imagine that when you met the outside world, people
other than your parents were amazed at your ability - imagine you wangled your way onto a W3C committee at 14. Now imagine that by sheer blind following of the next interesting thing, and talking to the next interesting person, you wangled your way into Y Combinator and into the Reddit sale. You're damn good at programming, but it turns out that being great at writing and programming doesn't translate at all into being good at business.
When I was 14, I assumed that I was going to program computers and get rich, much like Gates or Jobs. Aaron got a hell of a lot further down that adolescent trajectory than I did - I had all kinds of intermediate small failures along the way to soften the blow when it turned out I wasn't good at business. Now, ten years later, I've learned to be better at business.
Aaron bounced off, apparently really hard. He longed for those days when - just by talking and thinking and coding - he was taken as a surprising genius by people he'd never met. He wanted to walk in and surprise people with the fait accompli, cut right to the chase of being admired.
Or so I imagine. Because I know that at his age I thought exactly that way. I even have depressive tendencies - never been bothered by suicidal ideation, but then I never failed so badly as he did after the Reddit sale, and I could certainly see that happening to me in that case.
I may very well be projecting. But essentially, when I look at this, I just think, there but for the grace of early failure and family commitments go I.