I'm developing concern for Steve. He's been a well known developer and writer in the industry for years now (See his popular 'Google Platforms Rant' essay from years ago) [0].

Now, Yegge's writing tilts towards the grandoise... see his writing when joining Grab [1] and Sourcegraph [2] respectively versus how things actually played out.

I prefer optimism and I'm not anti AI by any means, but given his observed behavior and how AI can't exacerbate certain pathologies... not great. Adding the recent crypto activities on top and all that entails is the ingredients for a powder keg.

Hope someone is looking out for him.

[0] https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse452/23wi/papers...

[1] https://steve-yegge.medium.com/why-i-left-google-to-join-gra...

[2] https://sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-steve-yegge

▲

refulgentis 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

He was right about Google in [1] when I was still drinking the Kool-Aid, in big and tangible ways that aren't discussed publicly.

[2] is 100% accurate, Grok was the backbone / glue of Google's internal developer tools.

I don't disagree on the current situation, and I'm uncomfortable sticking my neck out on this because I'm basically saying "the guy who kinda seems out of it, totally wasn't out of it, when you think he was", but [1] and [2] definitely aren't grandiose, the claims he makes re: Google and his work there are accurate. A small piece of why I feel comfortable in this, is that both of these were public blogs his employer was 100% happy about when hiring him to top positions.

▲

Cedricgc 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I should be specific. I think the technical analysis is reasonable and I actually enjoy someone staking on a big vision, which is why I saved these pieces.

An example:

"I’ve seen Grab’s hunger. I’ve felt it. I have it. This space is win or die. They will fight to the death, and I am with them. This company, with some 3000 employees I think, is more unified than I’ve seen with most 5-person companies. This is the kind of focused camaraderie, cooperation and discipline that you typically only see in the military, in times of war.

Which should hardly surprise you, because that’s exactly what this is. This is war.

I am giving everything I’ve got to help Grab win. I am all in. You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish when you’re all in."

This is the writing of someone planning to make a capstone career move instead of leaving in 18 months. It's not the worst thing to do (He says he left b/c the time difference to support a team in SE Asia was hard physically, and he's getting older) and I support taking big swings. I'm just saying Yegge's writing has a pattern.

Crypto and what Yegge is doing with $GAS is dangerous because if the token price crashes and people betting their life savings think he didn't deliver on his promises... I like Steve personally which is why I'm saying anything.

▲

tom_ 7 hours ago | parent [-]

This appears to be the coin in question: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/gas-town/ - up 222,513.21% in the past week! (And down 25.26% in the last 24 hours. But... suppose it goes back up again?!)

	▲	mtlmtlmtlmtl 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		4 hours later, the 24h change is down just shy of 90%. To me this looks like a classic shitcoin pump and dump.

▲

driverdan 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The Gas Town post reads like some type of manic psychosis. I hope he snaps out of it and gets help.

▲

dang 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN. I know that often the intention is good, but it leads to bad places.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

(and I realize the GP was the place the line started getting crossed)

	▲	nahaaaa 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]