Neal Stephenson is a talentless hack.
It’s sad because he has a lot of ideas that I agree with or find interesting, like how a long time ago he thought that open source software can, and should, become the dominant mode of software development. It’s not the case in present day, of course, but it’d be nice if it were. That said, I remember having Snow Crash on my shelf for…oh, around 15 years or so and finally got around to reading it earlier this year/late last year. And oh my God that man cannot write a story. Cool, but superficial characters? Sure. An interesting setting where the world is violent and chaotic and capitalism has turned scientific advancement and private industry into a parody of itself? Also sure. Meaningful dialogue, plot structure, nuanced characterization, decent pacing, etc? Lol, no way, now let me describe my character doing a backflip while parrying an electric katana.
I agree with most of this post. I also agree that open source software is the way forward, but not that Stephenson has anything to do with the position. There is not an original bone in that man’s body.
Open source is great, but the reality is that closed source software is still a huge chunk of the industry. Most mobile apps are closed source. Almost everything Apple has touched is closed source. Google, Microsoft, IBM, OpenAI, etc. Closed source software development is very dominant in the industry. More so than I think Stephenson ever thought it would be.
I’ve read probably 4 or 5 of his books and while I don’t think he’s utterly without talent, my biggest complaint is that he doesn’t understand pacing and how to keep a story moving. He tends to get bogged down in long tedious and unnecessarily oblique descriptions that could easily be dispensed with in a sentence or two. And he does this at the expense of moving the story along. It’s galling.
