The best programmers I know

> To know a tool well, you have to know:

> its history: who created it? Why? To solve which problem?

> its present: who maintains it? Where do they work? On what?

I'm not clear on that. Why does the person matter? So you can check if their political views align with those of your tribe, or what?

But then, I never read the user names on HN comments I reply to, and I guess the article author does. Maybe even keeps files on them...

The creator matters because they are the key to understand the reason was created in the first place and under which circumstances. You get to learn about their other work, which might also be relevant to you, the limitations of the tool based on the problem is was designed to solve, and the broader ecosystem at the time of creation. For example, if you're a frontend developer it helps to know who Brendan Eich is, where he worked when he invented JavaScript, and what Netscape wanted to achieve with it. You would even learn a bit about the name of the language.

Similarly, it helps to know who maintains the code you depend on. Is there even a maintainer? What is the project roadmap? Is the tool backed by a company or otherwise funded? What is the company's mission? Without those details, there is a supply chain risk, which could lead to potential vulnerabilies or future technical debt.

> it helps to know who Brendan Eich is, where he worked when he invented JavaScript, and what Netscape wanted to achieve with it

That may have been relevant 15 years ago, whatever Eich wanted to do with JS, it's been out of his hands for a long time.

And you could also do the reverse and form an opinion about him based on JS :) Might not be very flattering.

It's true that he no longer steers the project, but his first version shaped the internet as we use it today. At least one could how a modern version of a similar idea would look like. What has changed since then? Which issues should be fixed? You might end up with Deno or perhaps WebAssembly or something else entirely, but it definitely helps to know the people behind the tools we use every day.