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I would be classed as a Rockstar programmer except I'm absolutely no good at Guitar Hero III!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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From what I remember, the term "rockstar programmer" originally meant someone who was really good at programming and also really good at understanding the business side of Silicon Valley startups, so that they ended up being extremely productive quickly when time really mattered.
It's normal for programmers who understand a business to be significantly more productive than programmers who don't understand the business they are working in. However, it's a temporary situation; other programmers improve their business knowledge (and technical skills) over time, so the productivity gap narrows.
I think the "rockstar programmer" concept is more of a crutch idea for business people who don't take the time or energy to understand real issues in software development. It's a useful concept in some situations, and it's a good counterbalance to other oversimplified concepts (that assume all engineers are equally productive), but it's not quite degraded so far that it's a "myth".
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It was 30 years ago today -- which is to say Sept. 27, 1983 -- that the seeds were planted for both Linux and the open source software movement, though neither is called that name by the man who help set both of them into motion, the irascible Richard Stallman. What's GNU with you?
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Apple's iOS 7 is plagued with HTML5 defects related to the Web SQL database, home-screen widgets, gestures, and animations. Maximiliano Firtman, an HTML5 developer and author of several popular Web programming books, revealed several of these bugs. And Michael Mullany, CEO of Web development environment vendor Sencha, both confirmed Firtman's findings and found more problems in Apple's HTML5 execution. But they're Apple bugs, bugs are cool now
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Apple has a lot of issues. It seems they copied Windows 8 for their new UI, but Windows 8 doesn't have as many bugs as iOS does. A  to Microsoft for actually not having as many bugs, and a  to Apple for not debugging iOS 7 or fixing reported bugs.
Keep Clam And Proofread
--
√(-1) 23 ∑ π...
And it was delicious.
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I don't see that they copied Windows 8 - the only similarity might be in the use of a superlight sans serif font everywhere. They certainly missed out on creating some of the better features of Windows 8 if they were targeting it (live tiles being the main one IMO). I think they just tried to change the UI too much, too fast for the number of heads they had working on it. I heard rumours that they were pulling people off other projects just to remove the skeuomorphism from some of the apps.
--------------
TTFN - Kent
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Microsoft is building another Office Windows 8-style application. Sources familiar with Microsoft's Office plans have revealed to The Verge that the app, codenamed Office Reader, is designed to be a cross format tool for consuming different types of content. During yesterday's employee-only company meeting, Microsoft's Kirk Koenigsbauer demonstrated the tool alongside a number of updates coming to Office in what he described as the "Gemini" wave. It allows opening Web pages and Office documents! I've been waiting for something like that!
The Lens app sounds pretty cool though. I know a lot of people that just photograph the whiteboard after a meeting, having it converted to text might be useful (assuming better hand writing recognition than I've ever seen).
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When groups of developers come together to talk about the state of OSS in .NET, the comparisons were traditionally drawn with Ruby; more recently Node.js has also become a focus for analogy. Both those ecosystems are almost entirely open-source, with lots of healthy competition and innovation, and a genuine sense that if somebody builds a better mousetrap, people will switch to it. “Why isn’t the .NET world more like that?” people ask, and they talk about whether it’s Microsoft’s fault and what they could do to help. What I rarely hear mentioned is the humungous elephant in the room: Visual Studio. Yet another opinion on the matter
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Kent Sharkey wrote: “Why isn’t the .NET world more like that?” people ask
Ask those people why they think the .NET world should be more like that.
Kent Sharkey wrote: Both those ecosystems are almost entirely open-source, with lots of healthy competition and innovation
Aaah, that's implying that one needs to be "open source" in order to have innovation and/or competition.
Kent Sharkey wrote: What I rarely hear mentioned is the humungous elephant in the room: Visual Studio.
Aight, granted, no competition there 
TL, DR:
Ruby, Node, etc. are text-based; text-based is easier to extend.
.NET is Visual Studio-based; Visual Studio is harder to extend.
No, Visual Studio is just the most used IDE, despite the open-source "competitors".
![Java | [Coffee]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/coffee.gif)
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer may be on his way out soon, but he's not leaving without taking a few more swipes at Apple, Amazon, and Google. I'm going to miss the big guy (Na-na na nah, hey, hey hey...)
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Thousands of employees filed into Seattle’s Key Arena today for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s final company meeting. Reports out of the meeting are not official, but we have a pretty good idea of the main announcements made during Ballmer’s last hurrah. New dance moves were not on the agenda
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I found myself scratching my head at the details on the preview of Ruby 2.1 for a minute. I don’t know what most of the items are! So let’s dig into them and dive into some of the details. Coming soon: less garbage collection! (And more)
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Google updates some search features that expand on its ability to answer your questions directly. "In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love."
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Kent Sharkey wrote: "In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with
love."
+5 for "Colossus: The Forbin Project" reference!
modified 30-Sep-13 20:16pm.
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WebKit long has been the dominant open source Web-rendering engine, but with Google’s Blink fork, its future has turned murky. The Web Blinks, and we're back to browser wars.
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Microsoft today launched BrowserSwarm, an open source tool to help Web developers automate testing of their JavaScript frameworks and libraries across devices and browsers. To take advantage, all you have to do is sign up for free here. If you're going to use JavaScript, might as well be sure it works
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Scientists at the lab are reporting that they’ve successfully managed to get two photons to interact with each other and form a “photonic molecule” that acts as if it has mass but maintains the properties of light. Photons as a rule contain no mass and don’t interact with each other, which is why two beams of light pass right through each other. Lightsabers aside, the creation of a “photonic molecule” is actually a Pretty Big Deal. "An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age."
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"managed to get two photons to interact with each other"
That's some tiny lightsaber.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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It's not the size, but in how you use it. 
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Cloud-based IDE provider Codenvy has introduced the idea of “instant projects” where developers can jump into a configured environment and immediately begin coding. These temporary environments require no authentication and open up interesting new possibilities for developers seeking community assistance or evaluating technology. Remember when code sharing involved floppies? Yeah. How primitive.
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Explore the tunnels and control rooms of the world's biggest particle collider from the comfort of your own home using Google Street View. Watch out for the sharp left after ALICE
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Terry Myerson is a tough guy to pin down. Where his predecessor, Steve Sinofsky, would post pages-long blogs explaining in raptuous telemetric detail many of the components that made Windows 7 and 8 (and by extension 8.1) tick, Myerson has a reputation for letting his products speak for themselves. That's going to make it hard to second-guess where the next version of Windows is headed -- but all indications at this point are encouraging. It helps they left so much room to improve
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Thirty years ago, on 26 September 1983, the world was saved from potential nuclear disaster. Thank you, Mr. Petrov.
This one pops up every once and a while (strangely at this time of the year), but it's worth remembering.
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Bill Gates made many exceptional decisions while he was leading Microsoft to immense success. He did, however, make a few errors. One of those was the idea of using “Control-Alt-Delete” — initially designed to efficiently reboot a computer — as a way to log into Windows. Let's all salute him, with your choice of number of fingers
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