Actually, maybe he is. I think we should be very careful to
put people on pedestals like this. Damian, merlyn, myself,
and others you didn't mention might sometimes have ideas
noone sane would ever have, inside the sugary layer with
chemical flavours are regular coders. If would take some
code of Damian, and post it here for review, without telling
it was from Damian, it would be shredded to pieces, if only
because it doesn't use strict or warnings. Merlyn probably
has posted more articles containing buggy code on Usenet
than the average monk has read articles. As for myself, well,
my code is of course perfect, it's just taking the rest of
you a long time to agree.
Never assume that because it's written by person $X, it has to
be good. Unless $X eq "Knuth" and $X is willing to pay money
for each mistake found.