No, this isn't a joke. This is straight party line Jeff Atwood. Atwood babbles about his pseudo "intellectual curiousity" all the time. Jeff posts a lot of strange stuff. I think Jeff doesn't know C nor any other non-VB, non-.NET language and doesn't really know how computers work and does not math and tries to justify this lack of knowledge on his blog. It's one thing not to know something. It's quite another to pat yourself on the back for not knowing it. But he does this with quite a lot of words, usually not his own. He does this with many other things too; for instance, he essentially applauded himself for not knowing or having any idea once explained what the phrase "begging the question" meant.

Yet, somehow he is making a living off barely visible ads and no real job that he discusses; surely Stackoverflow is not making that much money.