Putting programmers on a pedestal fits with the YC culture of marketing via lionization of technology personalties, but it's counter-productive if your aim is to actually grow in the field.

Hero worship blinds you to two simple facts, in almost all cases:

- They're not doing anything you couldn't also do if you worked at it as hard as they have.

- Like everyone, they're fallible, making mistakes, and may even not deserve the hero worship being heaped on them. Until you've worked as hard as they have to reach a sufficient level of understanding, you're not going to have as strong of a critical eye for where the erstwhile hero is doing it wrong.

Better to put no-one on a pedestal (least of all yourself).

I'm not putting him on a pedestal at all. He's by objective standards simply one of the best programmers that I know of, just like Usain Bolt is an extremely fast runner.

That is, by definition, a pedestal. It's not a useful metric by which to approach the world.

I'm sorry to disagree but you're wrong. There are better programmers than I, that no matter how hard I work I will never be as good as. Not everyone can be a Mozart or Mozart wouldn't be special.

You'll never be as good if you think of people this way.