Glad to see this, I'm a mega John fanboy as they come but the reality is this is close to the ideal working env for a hacker of his talents. The single biggest hurdle to good code is somebody else touching it and the other major hurdle is not owning the company/product direction.

Again, I am happy to recognize him as a genius no doubt, but I couldn't imagine he would've lasted in a CRUD Java gulag. Those places... break people.