

Ask HN: are there any "true" rockstars or celebrities who are programmers? - hoodoof

Wondering if there are any well known music rockstars or hollywood-type celebrities who are also programmers?
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sc68cal
Joel Thomas Zimmerman aka Deadmau5 does some programming for his Monome.

Link: [http://www.wired.com/video/dj-deadmau5-is-a-gear-
head/203906...](http://www.wired.com/video/dj-deadmau5-is-a-gear-
head/20390630001)

James Zabiela also plays his music on his iPad (Hooks up to Ableton Live)

Demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jasVTIHP4mA>

On stage: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9st7RDn8oc>

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nostrademons
Jordan Rudess (keyboardist of Dream Theater) has apparently released a couple
of iPhone synthesizer apps, though I dunno whether he actually wrote them
himself or collaborated with an experienced iPhone developer to produce them.

Also, Tom Scholz (frontman of Boston) was a kick-ass MIT-trained mechanical
engineer who's done a lot of hardware hacking, including a line of devices
that give you smooth tube amp tone at non-eardrum-popping volume levels.

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mechanical_fish
Jeff Robbins:

<http://www.lullabot.com/about/team/jeff-robbins>

I know that lots of other musicians program as well, of course, but not
necessarily ostentatiously.

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noahth
If you're willing to call Max/MSP/etc work programming (I am but I'm sure some
here will be willing to dispute that), you can add a lot of musicians to the
list, including Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and a whole bunch of electronic
artists.

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turbojerry
I'm not sure if Penn Penn Jillette has done any programming, I do know he uses
Linux, wrote for PC/Computing and was in Hackers, so there is a good chance he
has at least written a shell script.

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zerohp
Todd Rundgren is an actual rock star (with a certified gold LP.)

<http://trconnection.com/trbio.html>

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mthreat
Wiley Wiggins is an actor - he played the kid "Mitch Kramer" in Richard
Linklater's (excellent) 1993 film _Dazed n' Confused_ -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazed_and_Confused> He's been in several other
movies including Love & a .45, The Faculty, Waking Life, and Sorry, Thanks.

Now he's working on a kickstarter project, an iPad game called Thunderbeam! -
check it out:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wileywiggins/thunderbeam...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wileywiggins/thunderbeam-
for-the-ipad)

There's also Ashton Kutcher, who said at TechCrunch disrupt that he had
learned a bit of programming in college, but I'm not sure he would consider
himself a programmer.

