The plural of anecdote is not data, but when I worked at ThoughtWorks, Martin sent me some code to look at. It was very clean OO code (very smalltalk-ey in design and form, thought it was written in Ruby). The man can code well (not to the level of say Peter Norvig, but then not many of us can) and competently and is very sharp and when he gets hands on, solves problems fast.It is true that he doesn't have any code online where we can look at it.
Another admirable trait I've witnessed is his willingness to say "I don't know" when asked questions outside his circle of competence. He often says it very bluntly (which has caused some heartburn to some ThoughtWorkers once in a while, but that is another story).
His "Enterprise Patterns" book is very useful for anyone working on enterprise software. I believe DHH was influenced by the book when he was hacking Rails.
His upcoming book on rich gui apps seems promising too. Also he doesn't make outragoeus claims or adopt a condescending atitude to programmers who don't work the way he does/advocates (unlike say Robert Martin). I wouldn't dismiss him as a "know nothing" talker/blowhard.
As I said, just anecdotes. Make of them what you will.
Another admirable trait I've witnessed is his willingness to say "I don't know" when asked questions outside his circle of competence. He often says it very bluntly (which has caused some heartburn to some ThoughtWorkers once in a while, but that is another story).
His "Enterprise Patterns" book is very useful for anyone working on enterprise software. I believe DHH was influenced by the book when he was hacking Rails.
His upcoming book on rich gui apps seems promising too. Also he doesn't make outragoeus claims or adopt a condescending atitude to programmers who don't work the way he does/advocates (unlike say Robert Martin). I wouldn't dismiss him as a "know nothing" talker/blowhard.
As I said, just anecdotes. Make of them what you will.