why is part of the net folklore from the late 00s that also saw the emergence of Hacker News, ruby mainstream programming et al. I believe there's a strong respect in this community for the work this man has done in previous years.

_why is largely responsible for the success and relevance of Ruby to every level of person, entirely approachable, easy to access mentally and retain, totally engaging, and yet 100% bizarre and akin to doing engineering on psychedelics.

He spent 66% of his talks intentionally avoiding the topic he was asked to speak on, and yet that 33% was worth more than 100% of most other talks. He transcended programming. See deluge of Wikipedia links attached.