Sorry, you don't get to pre-empt all further discussion after saying what you want to say. :)
"Programming has a lot to do with people"
Everything people do has a lot to do with people.
"and convince others of your message is crucial to being an effective programmer and is very much what leadership is."
Once again, you are conflating leadership with programming. Two separate things. You can be good at either without being good at the other.
If you are working with other good programmers then they should be able to tell whether your design has the most technical merit, or whether some other design does. If you're politicking then the code is going to suffer.
"It used to be that a programmer could be an asshole of a person and have no communication skills"
I think that's a majorly incorrect stereotype. People with no communication skills tend to have social phobia. They are shy, not assholes. The assholes are the "Rockstar" types and the people who think they are amazing leaders. They like to communicate their perceived superiority to other people.
"Good people move on from jobs because they out-grow them"
Might want to work on your reading comprehension then.
"We're talking about freedom in hacking abilities here."
We're talking about jobs, quite obviously, as a given from the PG quote that started off this thread.
Not ability -- of course if you have an ability for something you can work on that something on your own time, that's not remotely close to being under contention.
As for money, if you have money, you don't have to work anywhere you don't want to. Also not disputed.
PG's claim is the best hackers can work wherever they want. This claim is a fallacy. No amount of technical skill guarantees that you can get hired exactly where you want.
Instead, empirical evidence shows that knowing someone in the company is the most effective way to get a job.
"I'd imagine that if DHH really, truly wanted to work on the Linux kernel, he'd have no trouble getting hired to do so."
That's pretty silly. Just because someone is famous for a Ruby project doesn't mean they'd know they first thing about low-level kernel code.
"it's pretty obvious they wouldn't want to work on that"
I'm not talking about working on something they DON'T want to work on. Obviously! I'm talking about working on something that is outside what they are known for, but which is an interest of theirs (hypothetical in this case).
Google is large enough it can take on people with almost any expertise.
But what if DHH wanted to get a job hacking the Linux kernel? Or Frankel wanted to get re-hired to AOL to work on the stuff they didn't like? And RMS doesn't even program anymore from what I understand.
What you're looking at is freedom due to financial independence. If you're financially independent, you don't have to work someplace you don't want to. It does not, however, mean you get to work wherever you DO want to.
I'm not talking about up-and-coming skill-wise, I'm referring to level of fame or notoriety. What it really boils down to is whether you have enough money to just work on what interests you vs. what pays the bills.
"they can absolutely get a job (almost) anywhere."
Not really. There are far more jobs that require skills you don't have than skills you do.
"If you have a decent reputation there will always be somebody practically begging for you to take their money to do some work for them."
That's not the same as being able to make money working on anything you want to work on. Of course you can make money working for someone else on their boring stuff, that's never been a question.
"I have interviewed about 20 programmers and only 1 blew me away. "
...so why was he out of a job? You see... even brilliant programmers don't always get to work for themselves or exactly where they want.
"This is applicable to the very best in any profession."
Not really. If you're the very best plumber you can fix Bill Gates's clogged toilet instead of the worst toilet in Scotland but you're still dealing with someone else's crap. =D
"And the very best hackers tend to be idealistic. They're not desperate for a job. They can work wherever they want."
I've heard PG repeat this but I think it's fallacious. A lot of up-and-coming hackers can't pick and choose where to work except in the sense that any person can quit one job and apply for another one. They can't unilaterally get themselves into Google, for example.
Established hackers also may have constraints, such as time and family commitments, that keep them working a stable job instead of a startup, or keep them where they are rather than uprooting to go work at e.g. Google for a lower standard of living (possibly less salary and almost certainly higher cost-of-living, if you work at the HQ) even if they'd prefer to work there.
Or your company may fold and you may have trouble finding an awesome job right away and have to settle for a tolerable one instead. Considering that so many start-up founders live hand to mouth, they are quite likely to be "desperate for a job" at various points, or at least unable to work "wherever they want".
They might also find that the startup they want to do is just not as profitable or likely to succeed as some other one, and end up working on the other one instead. Scratching your own itch does not necessarily coincide with "making something people want" on a commercial scale.
Ha, with EC2 you can get around that now. Separate your website IP from your crawling IP, and every time CL blocks an IP, switch to a new one. Eventually they'll have to block the entire AWS range, but that's okay, you can crawl over cablemodem/DSL connections that use DHCP. What are they going to do, block Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner?
Then you can get around referer [sic] blocks for your links to CL that the user clicks on by using a redirect, I think.
You can slurp the entirety of CL daily without causing them traffic problems. I mean it's equivalent to each page getting one page view per day, which is nothing. Just keep track of URLs so you only slurp new content, and serve thumbnails off your own hosts (it's fair use).
DHH by far and that isn't to say the others weren't good, just that his was stellar by comparison. In other years PG might have won -- nothing wrong with it, it was pretty good, just that DHH was stellar.
Some of the top points for me (my interpretations):
1) Rails - first version was 1000 lines. You don't have to make something gargantuan that solves every problem as a first version!
2) Rails was a means to an end, something used in the process of making something REAL. It wouldn't work as a day job, it would be horrible to just work on a framework all the time.
3) If you only HAVE 2 hours a day, working on it is something to look forward to (my inference), whereas if you have all day every day you procrastinate. Don't expect yourself to work on it all the time, it's not realistic.
4) Reverse terror alerts -- SO much coverage given to the one in a million success stories that we subjectively feel it's much more likely than it is. We are brainwashed with overexposure. The odds are much better of building a small business, and of course there's nothing preventing you from selling that anyway. I suppose it's like flipping a house -- make it someplace nice and live in it and you can enjoy it, and that doesn't stop you from selling it later if you want. If you are focused on flipping it then it becomes kind of an albatross because you're too attached to a low-probability outcome that depends on other people, which makes you a bit desperate and unable to enjoy the process, which just becomes an interminable wait.
5) Calling the shots, running at your own pace -- not having to "yes, massa" and do what your investors tell you.
6) Having a bunch of small customers vs. one huge one means you don't have to placate some fussy demanding customer or risk losing the account and all your income. If a small customer isn't worth it, you can refund and let them go.
Just develop some freaking self-control.