[throwaway6497]

Is he really? The title is so mis-leading. Coach of SV - Bill Campbell. Yoda of SV - Knuth? Not really.

Knuth is more like the Yoda of CS. What is SV really? He is so far away from all the SV excesses - greed is good, VC shenanigans, founder hubris, drinking cool-aid, becoming new defacto destination for MBAs instead of Finance, FANG mania and worshipping, Leetcode grinding to get into FANGs and their brethren to chase insane comps, starry eyed and naive entrepreneurs who want to change the world

Where does any of this overlap with Knuth. Lot of pirates in SV. Yoda like figure - I can't even think of one. If tweets are any indication, I would nominate Naval and PG as Yoda's of angel-funded/pre-series-A start-up landscape.

[vanusa]

What is SV really? He is so far away from all the SV excesses

That's precisely the point: He's the icon of the ideals that SV claims to espouse - but has obviously long since deserted.

That's why he deserves to be called Yoda.