Elon Musk fires back at Dogecoin creator over his claim the billionaire struggled with coding: 'my kids wrote better code when they were 12'

Musk took aim at Jackson Palmer after he called the richest man in the world a "grifter".

In an interview with Australian news site Crikey, Palmer said he messaged Musk several years ago after creating a bot that could help identify cryptocurrencies on social media. During the exchange, he said it became clear that Musk didn't understand coding as well as he said.

He sells a vision in hopes that he can one day deliver what he promises, but he doesn't know that. That is very evident with the full-self-driving promise of the company.

Musk responded to the article with some harsh comments.

My kids write better code when they are 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent me, according to Musk.

Four years ago, Palmer posted the code he is sharing today. He didn't reply to the request from Insider.

The simple script definitely worked in catching and reporting the less sophisticated accounts. I shared it with a lot of people.

Palmer, who left Doge coin in 2015, said in a thread on the social media network that they were trying to run a similar script. The code wouldn't be as effective today as it was in the past.

Musk, who is in the process of purchasing a company, did not stop there. He wondered if Palmer was involved with Dogecoin, a virtual currency that the billionaire has promoted. Musk's support for the meme coin has helped buoy its value. Dogecoin has begun to be accepted as payment for some of the merchandise of both companies.

Palmer always forgets to mention that he never wrote a single line of Doge coin code.

Palmer called for Billy Markus to respond to Musk's accusation.

The people after us did more than either jackson or I did on the code base.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022

The two people who started the doge coin as a joke are no longer working on it.

When they first created the meme token, Palmer, an Adobe software engineer, and Markus, a former IBM software engineer, hadn't even met. The domain name dogecoin.com was bought by Palmer as a joke. After stumbling upon the site, Markus got in touch with Palmer about his own efforts to program a digital currency that could appeal to larger demographic.

Dogecoin was launched by the two engineers. One of the world's most valuable digital coins is thecryptocurrencies.

Palmer is not the first person to be in Musk's crosshairs. The head of Russia's space agency and the Biden Administration have been the subject of spats on the social media platform.