He also learnt new approaches from Ruby - reminds me of esr's "learn lisp to improve your coding, not necessarily to use it".<p>It also seems he became something of a coding god, especially in his domain, able to create frameworks he needed - on demand. It's impressive to be able to create those tools, but even more impressive to realize what you need - and then for the tools to be both actually useful and usable. Generally, it's said to be a bad idea to write your own tools - unless you <i>can</i> (i.e. have the ability), says Alan Kay, because then you can create just the right tool for the job. Though perhaps no one else quite understands them, not being gods, and so they need to rewrite in aspx.<p>I like his non-coding observation. GIRLFRIENDS: THE NEW ONE IS BETTER BECAUSE * YOU * ARE BETTER