I actually did share that email in a sister thread; I also wrote about it specifically in a blog post [1] if you don't want to traverse through the comments.
I completely agree with your thesis. I was a recent college dropout, and Joe's enthusiasm about Erlang, distributed programming, and pretty much everything else about computers was really a good springboard for self-education.
Thanks for sharing that experience. This matches my interactions with him at a couple conferences. Always willing to spend a moment explaining things to anyone. I had the pleasure of drinking beer with him at one of them and he was genuinely excited when I asked to have him sign my erlang book. His Twitter was one of the few I followed. His teachings and musings changed how I view software engineering. He will be missed.
I completely agree with your thesis. I was a recent college dropout, and Joe's enthusiasm about Erlang, distributed programming, and pretty much everything else about computers was really a good springboard for self-education.
[1] https://medium.com/@tombert/rip-joe-armstrong-b6252ff93654