Visual Basic was great. Maybe barely usable as a language alone, but great because it allowed you to do lots GUI-wise with little code.
As far as great hackers having an effect on much of anything, as long as most corporations continue to ignore disparities in skill among programmers and pay them all equally, the more skilled craftpeople naturally will be driven away from the average corporation, into areas like research, stock trading, startups, or the safe umbrella of Google, where they are either compensated in money or in being not treated like kids. This is perfectly natural (indeed, I'm surprised that many skilled white collar workers in other professions are willing to work at the average corporation). But in the meantime, the skilled craftspeople have little effect on the mainstream development of computer programming, which is done by the large corporations. Thus "skilled hackers" are neither here nor there in the development of things of late, and this shouldn't be surprising.
As far as great hackers having an effect on much of anything, as long as most corporations continue to ignore disparities in skill among programmers and pay them all equally, the more skilled craftpeople naturally will be driven away from the average corporation, into areas like research, stock trading, startups, or the safe umbrella of Google, where they are either compensated in money or in being not treated like kids. This is perfectly natural (indeed, I'm surprised that many skilled white collar workers in other professions are willing to work at the average corporation). But in the meantime, the skilled craftspeople have little effect on the mainstream development of computer programming, which is done by the large corporations. Thus "skilled hackers" are neither here nor there in the development of things of late, and this shouldn't be surprising.