It could mean that they see themselves as competing in a global marketplace. That they don't rely on geography and are quite happy to be ranked against the best of them. Not necessarily ranked highly but content to compete based on productivity and quality of work alone.
I can't be absolutely sure what you mean by this comment, but it feels like a needlessly personal attack.
FWIW, I don't really approve of the self-description of "world class software developer", either because (i) I'm not really sure what it means, but (ii) it sounds a bit pretentious. Still, it doesn't really relate to the quality or validity (or otherwise) of the post.
Its no more a personal attack that your comment, "it sounds a bit pretentious" since that's all my comment means.
Leica manufacture cameras made of brass and, like apple, are more "experience-oriented". I can appreciate putting a picture of yourself on your blog, but taking a photograph of yourself holding a camera which obscures everything but a brand name... that's equally suggestive of "a bit pretentious".
I've worked with him five or six years ago and he was very productive and smart even then. People on HN need to relax and dial down the harshness of their criticism.
Not really if you work as a contractor or freelancer. In those cases you have to shout to the world that you are world class developer. Recruiters or Managers love terms like world-class, ninja, rockstar etc. Its unfortunate state of our industry.
This is unfortunately true in life in general. Many people of decision making power are attracted to self promoters. So if you really want more opportunities and more upward growth, you'll get what you want faster by peacocking.
Any time I see ninja or jedi in a job ad I avoid it. Rockstar is borderline because Joel coined the term as far as I am aware and actually has some decent stuff to say about software.
Well, I just looked through some of his commits on some of the repos. Not pretty good. Productive maybe but definitely not good. Commit messages are quite lacking he's hard coding user display strings.
Without spending more time or having some domain knowledge of his problem, I can't really comment on the architecture setup/choices.
