Significance - no. Familiarity - I'd say yes. Unfortunately I don't know the projects you mentioned that well, so I can't say anything about them. But from the projects I do deal with (either developers or people related to project in some way):
- Python: van Rossum, Beazley, ...
- Mono: de Icaza
- Mysql: Monty Widenius
- Ruby: Katz, Shaw, Bini, ...
- Chef: Matt Ray
...
Yes - I do believe that if you claim serious knowledge about some project, but can't name anyone involved into that project in one way or another, there's something weird going on. Typically you'd run into some reoccurring name while looking through bugs, mailing lists, manuals, etc.
> I do believe that if you claim serious knowledge about some project, but can't name anyone involved into that project in one way or another, there's something weird going on.
Even if this is true (which is debatable at best), it's a long stretch from the blogger's aphorism "If you don't know $VOCAL_DIVA_PROGRAMMER, Scala==hard". He obviously doesn't imply you should be familiar with Mongrel to have a chance to become good in Scala.
All this nonsense would be unnecessary if the author made his point by mentioning, say, "referential transparency" or "map-reduce" instead of "Zed Shaw".
I agree with your opinion this part of the article is silly/wrong. Then again, I was responding directly to the parent's claim, rather than "commending on the article through responding to the parent" ;)
