
There Are No Famous Programmers - suraj
http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1275989245.html
======
edw519
If you want to be famous, go be an entertainer, athlete, or politician.

If you want to be a programmer, check your ego at the door. The two biggest
roadblocks to success in programming are incompetence and attitude. BigEgo =
BadAttitude.

I measure my success not in fame, but in the value gained by those who use my
software, and the value gained by those they serve, and so on, and so on. I
don't know them and they don't know me, but I'd like to think the world's a
better place because of all the ones and zeroes I've arranged. They are the
stars and that's good enough for me.

~~~
awt
Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the door? I
think students of Buddhism have been trying to figure out how to do this for
centuries. I don't think it's as simple as checking it at the door.

~~~
timr
_"Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the
door?"_

My thoughts exactly. The parent comment is the sort of "advice" that is easy
to dispense and makes everyone feel good, but is fundamentally useless. These
platitudes are the honeypot comments of online forums -- everyone votes for
them because they "agree", but they might as well be voting up a picture of a
kitten hanging from a tree branch. It's comforting to think that we're somehow
above the base human need for recognition, but not very close to the truth.

For example, why is it okay for entertainers, actors and politicians to pursue
fame, while programmers must toil in selfless obscurity? Are we supposed to be
martyrs?

Also, not for nothing, but when the guy with the top comment score on HN --
_the guy who wore a t-shirt bearing his HN login name at Startup School_ \--
tells you to abandon your ego, well...I'm no english major, but there's a
certain situational irony there.

~~~
icey
I wish _more_ people would have identified themselves with their HN usernames
somehow at last year's startup school.

It sucks to find out that there were a bunch of people from HN there and I
missed out on the chance to talk to them in person because I couldn't make the
connection based on their name.

Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens to
be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is you're
accusing edw519 of.

~~~
timr
_"Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens
to be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is
you're accusing edw519 of."_

Not really. Fortunately, the world is not binary, and there's a fairly large,
practical gap between "writing your ID on a nametag" and having a t-shirt
custom made.

That said, I'm not accusing him of anything bad -- it was a clever self-
promotional ploy. I'm just pointing out the irony.

------
plinkplonk
"Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day. Maybe it's Rails
or Python or something. Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking
them up. I can't do that for anything I use. Alright, let's say you can do
that. You know a myriad of things about the people who make your tools, but
can you honestly say you know as much about them as you do about the tools
they made you? Be honest with yourself and really look at how much you know
about the people behind your gear as you do about the gear itself."

This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use?
I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even
the apartment I live in. And when I do know their names I certainly don't know
them better than I do my tools. Why should I want to?

"I still have to do programmer interviews like everyone else. No matter how
much code I put out, I still have to solve stupid puzzles about coconuts and
manholes. No matter how many web servers or email frameworks or database
servers or chat servers or assemblers I write I still have to prove I can
code. No matter how many copies of my software get deployed I still have to
prove I can make reliable software."

I wouldn't want to comment on what Zed's personal experience is , but I know
many programmers who wouldn't have to "prove that they can code". "Fame" sees
to correlate inversely with having to jump through hoops. I doubt if anyone
really wants to test Linus (or Carmack or DHH or any other "famous"
programmer) for "ability to code". Outside the MegaCorp, and especially in
startups, a reputation for Open Source contributions helps you avoid stupid
questions/tests etc, at least in my limited experience. It is often the
undistinguished guy with the undistinguished cv that has to go through the
technical nitpick interview.

I think this experience may be somewhat unique to Zed. No harm in that of
course. Just pointing out that is far from universal.

Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes. I
don't mean that he is crazy or anything, just that the logic in his posts
seems increasingly frayed.

~~~
troygoode
"This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we
use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or
even the apartment I live in."

I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There
are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction
workers either. People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of
their code - they're famous because of their products.

Of course then he dives off into this strange diatribe about being forced to
interview the same way we peons have to despite his previous works - nevermind
the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager
has read the code to mongrel (most of the devs using it haven't either, for
that matter).

I also think he is wrong on this latter point as - even though I'm completely
non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a
lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had.

"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."

I'll agree with you on that one.

~~~
stcredzero
_the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager
has read the code to mongrel_

Just wait a minute here! Isn't this _weird?_ It's like hiring designers and
refusing to look at their portfolios.

The interview process puts people through all these weird contortions so we
can (among other things) get some indirect indications of how they code. Why
not just read their code? We want to know if they can collaborate on a
project, why not look at the result of projects they collaborated on?

I think in the corporate world at least, programming _has_ become a commodity.

~~~
vijaydev
I highly doubt that hiring managers are going to have the time to read code.
Very few people go through a candidate's code before an interview.

~~~
stcredzero
Then I would ask: why is it that designers almost always have their portfolios
looked at when they are getting hired? I think we're being slaves to an
illogical social pattern.

~~~
Psyonic
For one thing, a visual portfolio can be looked through in the time it would
take to dig into one complex method.

~~~
stcredzero
In the context of is thread, I read this as, "We're trapped in an illogical
social pattern, because we are _lazy_."

~~~
Psyonic
I'd agree with that, but I'd prefer the term "energy conserving."

------
dasil003
Zed's thesis is flawed. He set out to be famous--ostensibly because he didn't
get enough respect in Ruby-land. It's not clear what his goal was, but now
he's jumping to the conclusion that fame doesn't bypass bureaucratic red tape.
However Zed wasn't satisfied with his small notoriety, and instead chose to
accelerate it by deliberately becoming a flaming asshole writing vitriolic
rants full of personal attacks.

I enjoyed Zed's rants, and I thought they were fairly insightful. I certainly
never interpreted them as being completely out of line, or that Zed was a
total asshole. He explicitly stated that he was testing the theory of being an
internet blowhard to get attention. Fine.

But the problem is now he's famous for being a blowhard. He went from being
moderately famous (and misunderstood) among the Ruby elite, to being widely
famous for writing snarky articles. Well, that's obviously not going to get
you past any technical interviews. Also, he decided to burn his bridges in the
Ruby community, where I guarantee you he could have gotten plenty of jobs
without an interview before. Nowadays, as someone who does a lot of hiring, I
can tell you that I would think twice before hiring Zed for fear of what kind
of drama he would bring to the team. That fear may be totally unfounded--I
don't know him personally--but where before I knew Zed as "the guy who made
Rails deployment viable", now I know him as "the guy who thinks he's god's
gift to programming and hates a lot of shit."

Zed hasn't discovered anything about programmer fame, he just learned that
internet-famous is worthless.

~~~
earl
Sadly, no. " Also, he decided to burn his bridges in the Ruby community, where
I guarantee you he could have gotten plenty of jobs without an interview
before." I think Zed made it pretty clear in the discussion around the "Rails
is a ghetto" article that he did not, in fact, get any jobs period. My
understanding is that the article was the outcome of his frustration at not
reaping any rewards, particularly financial ones, for contributing a pretty
important piece of technology to the rails stack.

------
alttab
Fame is a distraction. 'Nuff said.

As far as coders becoming factory workers - I think this is true, depending on
the route you take. Do you just write code? Or do you also manage people, make
great presentations, or define business models?

Just because you can write code, its hard to think about something invisible,
and no one else in your business can do it doesn't mean you're a rock star.
_This requires a programmer to walk around thinking they can do everyone
else's job but not vice versa._

If there was only one thing about (us) programmers I hate the most it is our
collective attitude. Our holier-than-thou more-technical-and-logical-than you
bull shit. Then we complain about accolades, accomplishment, social standing.

We are what we make ourselves. What we do does not define who we are or what
we think we are entitled to. I agree it takes a lot of distinguishing to get
noticed as a programmer but I would say that's true whatever you do in life.

~~~
jonsmock
Wow, I really needed to hear this right now. Thanks.

------
vessenes
I was stunned to read that this guy wishes he were more famous, and that the
purpose of said fame would be to get him out of coding interviews, especially
after his first paragraph made it sound like he really was happy being nerdy.

Hacking a x0xb0x (did I spell that right?) sounds pretty cool. Only after
googling around for a bit did I learn what Zed is 'famous' for, as he refers
to it later in his essay. Only after reading the whole essay did I learn he
thinks programmers are second class citizens.

This just seems silly to me; if you want to be famous, go do something that
captures hearts and minds, (and have a good press team.) Or, get really rich,
(and have a good press team.) Or, get a job in the media, (and have a good
press team.)

To me, his essay reads like he wants respect, and thinks it will come with
fame. I feel sad for him; this probably won't work for him, just like it
doesn't work for anyone else.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Proving yourself at a new company is a huge pain point. No matter how good you
are, you always go through the slow process of earning rights in order to get
some freedom to work autonomously within the framework and procedures of the
company.

That the OP wants to avoid this pain is understandable. It's probably just not
realistic.

~~~
vessenes
But this is true for senior executives on down to office admin staff. Even a
hotshot CEO should be closely watched by the board until he/she has earned
trust and proven an ability to execute, lead and inspire.

Wanting out of that cycle seems juvenile to me.

------
jasonkester
Wow, I've never come away from a HN article embarrassed for the author before.

I had expected from the title to see an article explaining why there don't
tend to be a lot of famous computer programmers. I was completely unprepared
to read a complaint from a guy who thinks he should be famous, yet isn't
treated with the deference he thinks he deserves.

Yikes! I had to stop after 3 paragraphs.

~~~
kiba
You must be reading a different essay.

I interpret that the author's fame doesn't help the author at all and that
fame is a pointless asset.

~~~
jasonkester
Indeed, that would be the case if the author were indeed famous. But he's not.

Fame is defined by people knowing who you are, yet this guy's issue is that
nobody knows who he is. QED, he's not famous.

~~~
stcredzero
In that case, most celebrities arguably aren't famous. All people know is a
fiction and nobody knows who they are.

------
bugschivers
I personally actually find myself agreeing with pretty much all of this
article.

The point is, is that it is not about fame, that is tangential to point, which
is that programmers don't celebrate other programmers, that they don't value
other programmer's work.

This is the only industry I know of, where people give away so much for so
little, and they don't ask anything in return, because none of you seem able
to appreciate the effort involved in your own or anyone else's work.

I don't think that it is absurd to know the name of the person who created the
tool you use EVERY day, when they are from your OWN industry, only other
programmers have the capacity to appreciate the craftsmanship and work
involved.

That is the saddest thing about the programming industry, that you all can’t
see how much difference you can make, you give a project attention, hey, maybe
you even donate some money and express some gratitude that someone went out of
their way to work in their spare time, to give you something that you don’t
even have to pay for and you all reap dividends.

Maybe it’s because this industry is so young, but something has to give, or
you WILL be relegated to the positions of machinery, actual real people have
to sit there and code this stuff, they give up evenings and weekends, they
sacrifice time with family and friends, non-programmers don’t get this, YOU
do.

This industry needs to learn how to appreciate and stop attacking those who
put their creations out there, the one man band who spends every weekend
keeping a ruby gem up to date matters, the handful of guys coding frameworks
and platforms and libraries and everything else matter, because you guys use
their work, regularly.

They should get your attention, not Jobs who has his billions to play with, or
Linus, who has his enormous Linux universe to maintain, or any of the guys
famous by association with big companies, products or projects. The little
guys, who keep the whole shebang ticking over, who work endlessly, in the
shadows of your attention, creating awesome, cool things for you play with,
tools for you to work with and games for you to relax with.

~~~
bugschivers
Reading more recent comments, I see a common theme, the "I don't code for
glory", this isn't a rant about fame, it is a rant about recognition, from
within the industry.

I worked as a dog groomer years ago and we had competitions and awards and yes
there were even famous dog groomers.

Nobody codes for glory, lol, but recognition is a different thing, I read once
"people will crawl over broken glass for recognition", which is funny because
it seems that programmers run away from recognition.

The things you write do not need to be ground-breaking, game-changing or
revolutionary to garner recognition, you deserve recognition for putting the
time in, for creating something that people rely on, that works.

Somewhere there is a disconnect, everybody DESERVES recognition, it is not
about ego, or fame, or fortunes, or groupies, it is about connecting with
someone within your own field and saying "hey, you did a good job, I
appreciate it".

------
mtoledo
"I still have to do programmer interviews like everyone else. No matter how
much code I put out, I still have to solve stupid puzzles about coconuts and
manholes. No matter how many web servers or email frameworks or database
servers or chat servers or assemblers I write I still have to prove I can
code. No matter how many copies of my software get deployed I still have to
prove I can make reliable software."

I still think that's an isolated fact though, and most software shops would
offer Zed a job without asking him 'What is a pointer?' questions if he was,
for instance, being interviewed by some rubyist (given the notoriety of
mongrel). Maybe as he says, I'm wrong. But it could also be just like the guy
that offered Ninh Bui a job where 'the candidate must have some experience
with Phusion Passenger' (Ninh is one of the creators of Passenger). Some
employers just mess up, and having offered Zed a sysadmin job might just have
been that, an isolated fact.

Now, I would risk on saying that famous programmers could be made more of 'web
presence' and 'open source code' than commercial code. Like, Zed's famous for
mongrel and his other open source works (lamson, etc), but I'd say that, in my
opinion, he's also _famous_ because of his blog and being a prolific writer
and, at the same time, quite controversial. Curiously, he's working on a very
cool project commercially, Dropbox (very cool in my opinion anyway), but I
don't think that has anything to do with how _famous_ he is, even though, in
my opinion, that might be the skill that's most relevant for me, as an
employer, to know if I wanted to hire him (as most software shops are making
apps, and not email frameworks or web servers).

So maybe, just like the first step on being famous is having lots of blog
readers and open source projects (rather than having made a great contribution
to a commercial product), the second step is getting funding, being to
parties, etc. (and I just don't notice that because I'm not famous, or because
I'm not on SF)

------
neilk
I think Zed should know by now that the tech interview is also a personality
screen. It's helpful to know if you're hiring someone who rolls his eyes when
asked to do something he thinks trivial. Or who wants to be treated like a
rockstar.

Also, it's a way of getting team buy-in, even when hiring a lead. Whatever the
team rituals are to establish respect, the new guy has to pass them. If it's
dumb questions about missionaries and cannibals, that's lame, but so be it.

~~~
stcredzero
In short, ritual justifies lameness?

~~~
ekanes
No, he's saying lame rituals help you avoid hiring prima donnas.

~~~
stcredzero
It may also scare away those who do not like lameness.

I once had an interview for a Smalltalk position, where, after the 3rd
question, I asked, "are _all_ of these questions from the well known list of
Smalltalk interview questions? I already know those."

I suspect that this lost me the position, which I think is strange, but
fortunate. The lameness of an interview is often a good indicator of how
bureaucratized or politicized the corporate environment is.

~~~
rbanffy
> It may also scare away those who do not like lameness.

This is precisely the point ekanes was trying to make. It's not lameness, but
perceived lameness. If you perceive the company as lame, you would not be a
good fit anyway.

But rest assured that, if I were the interviewer, your recognition of a known
list of interview questions would not cost you the position.

And my interviews are neither lame, nor only about coding skills.

------
ErrantX
Interesting post from Zed there.

 _It's even gone so far that people demand that we use the BSD license (or any
license) that doesn't require credit for using your work. Other programmers
don't want to have to put your name in a credits section of their
applications._

Counter opinion (I realise this is only a subset of Zeds point, which I do
agree has some useful points)?

The reason many of us like to see libraries, frameworks and support structure
(as opposed to _software_ which has an end use) licensed under BSD or similar
is less because we actively desire to remove attribution.. but because we like
to have control over our own code licensing choices. Generally programmers are
pretty good about credit. More importantly the GPL does not force you to
mention anything in the credits... at all... you can just leave all the
references in the code - and in many cases people just won't read that. So I
don't buy this argument much at all.

(side point: I maintain a couple of FOSS/Open Source projects and love the
idea of stuff I find interesting being used in all sorts of ways. I couldn't
really care less about whether someone makes $100 Million using it in their
app. In fact I do care about that; firstly I care _positively_ about the fact
that I helped them with their success. Secondly I kick myself that it wasn't
something I thought of doing. Doh! I prefer to trust that someone will use my
code ethically; by which I mean a) tell other people about the cool piece of
code X that they are using and b) contribute back to us. But I personally
don't like the idea of forcing that behavior :P

Although; it's understandable why people do use the GPL for non-software
code).

You know; on a related note I think the section before the above quote was
interesting. And he has something of a point - that we don't think enough
about the people making useful code for us. I don't think we are _stealing
their soul_ :) but there is definitely a lack of communication (even when the
GPL is in use).

tl;dr - I don't buy the idea that certain licenses address the problem of
programmer fame.

~~~
icefox
Everyone knows that BSD requires you give them credit. Right? Right? I hope
people are fulfilling the full requirement of the copyright and not just #1

"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3\. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must
display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software
developed by the <organization>."

For example in safari click Help/Acknowledgments

~~~
gxti
The third clause was removed in 1999, although apparently some software is
still using the 4-clause form.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses>

------
albertsun
For some reason, this very strongly reminded me of this scene from Entourage
where Johnny Drama has to audition.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC57rdYMM>

"Still I have to sing for my supper."

It's like Zed Shaw is really angry and yelling at the hiring manager "Do you
know who I am?!"

~~~
drats
I read a story on HN a while ago about a guy who was connected to a powerful
politician who was getting hassled at airport security, who didn't care about
this name-dropping, and his ego got the better of him and he just flipped and
started screaming "Do you know who I am?!" at them over and over. The response
of the security guys was to casually call over the radio to the drag-you-away-
for-a-free-prostate-exam TSA hardmen "I think you better come down here, there
is a guy who doesn't know who he is".

------
agentultra
I'm not convinced that Zed was suggesting that programmers should be famous
for what they do (or that anyone should). The idea of programmers being like
rock-stars is wholly preposterous. It's much harder for us to convince anyone
that we're cool. I highly doubt I will ever get a coterie of groupies and
sycophants to feed me drugs and sleep with me because I have a high wpm and
can write a 2000-line report script without a single bug or syntax error.

What I do think he is suggesting is that industry should give us recognition
for what we do. I honestly don't know who designed the car my taxi driver
drove me to work in this morning. However, I'm pretty sure that if the design
of the car was a significant feat in engineering then the engineer who
designed it probably has a shiny little trophy above their desk. And if that
person ever went looking for a job I doubt their interviewer would waste time
asking them questions to ascertain whether they're an engineer. This person
would have the industry recognition to open certain doors implicitly.

There is _some_ industry recognition, sure. Amongst us programmers. I just
finished reading "Coders at Work" not too long ago. There are names in there
that I'd expect most geeks would know and be familiar with. It was a very
inspiring read.

Now as an experiment, ask your boss if they know what any of those people are
recognized for.

I know I'm probably begging the question. The point I'm trying to make is that
the people we work for that make so much money off of what we build... they
don't know who these people are. They don't take time to familiarize
themselves with these sorts of things.

I think industry awards, trade publications, and the like would go a long way
to bridge that gap. It has worked for pretty much every other industry. Why is
programming such an exception?

------
jarin
It's a good point that programmers only become famous among non-programmers
because of non-code reasons, but the same applies to specialists in almost any
technical field (except for maybe physics and math).

~~~
bad_user
> It's a good point that programmers only become _famous among programmers_
> because of non-code reasons

There, fixed that for you.

~~~
btmorex
Actually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code
reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc.

To be honest, Zed Shaw seems to be the exception since he's almost certainly
more well known for blogging than any code that he's written.

~~~
lelele
> Actually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code
> reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc.

Not at all: "Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day.
[...] Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up." Can you
name 4 people on Linux, Perl, etc. core teams? I'd bet you can't. Or do we
think that Torvalds, Wall, etc. wrote the software they are famous for on
their own? That's what Zed is talking about.

~~~
btmorex
I was responding to the poster I responded to, not Zed's post. Specifically, I
think most famous programmers (at least among other programmers) are famous
for what they coded.

That said, I can actually name 4 core contributers to Linux although I'm not
sure what the significance of that might be (Linus, Ted T'so, David Miller,
Andrew Morton).

------
d4nt
I can't name the architect for the office building I'm sitting in. Or the
designer of my (distinctly average) car.

Having said that, I know that Tim Berners Lee created the Web, Jon Resig built
jQuery and James Dyson designed my vacuum cleaner.

I don't think creating something "you use all day" should qualify you for
being famous. Doing something new and very innovative sometimes does though.

~~~
rythie
Are those the people that really created the products you use today though?

Tim Berners Lee may have created the web, but he created it without fonts
tags, images, layout and so on. The web exists because of the millions of
people who put a lot of work into it including Amazon, Altavista, Google,
Yahoo, Netscape and so on.

jQuery lists 21 people in it's team and 8 past members:
<http://jquery.org/team>

Did you buy the very first Dyson vacuum cleaner? (the DC01 in 1993) or one
designed by one of it's 1500+ staff
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_%28company%29>

Most products are built by a lot of people but just have a famous leader (who
may or may not have made the very first version that you probably never saw).

~~~
vessenes
In the interest of securing our oral history about the web, Tim Berners Lee
had layout and images. And built-in click-to-edit.
<http://info.cern.ch/NextBrowser1.html>

~~~
rythie
In 1991 it looked like this:
[http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T...](http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

In 1992 Erwise, ViollawWW and Lynx were created and Mosaic in 1993, Netscape
in 1994. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web>)

That picture was from 1993, though I'd concede I got a few inaccuracies in my
comment, however Tim Berners Lee, didn't create the whole web by himself, even
in the very early days there were others creating it too, that have now been
forgotten.

~~~
vessenes
Re: TBL, I totally agree with you.

Re the links: Interesting --
[http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/M...](http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html)
has an SGML DTD for HTML, which mentions images, but that DTD is dated 1995,
many years after TBL was speccing the web originally.

An interesting bit of history lost, the first DTDs for HTML, as well as some
canonical first pages.

------
lelele
I think this post nails down what I think is a recurring issue with us
techies. We concentrate too much on _what we do_ , and too little in _being
known for what we do_ , which, according to Chris Lytle, is the third reason
of success:

"The third secret of success is that you have to be known for what you know.
Other people have to know you know what you're doing. When other people know
you know what you're doing, they come to you for help and advice, not just for
your low price."

What about the former two reasons of success? Here they are:

"The first secret of success is that you have to know what you're doing. There
are a lot of people who fail simply because they don't study their industry.
They don't go to seminars. They don't read. And they fail. [...] The second
secret of success is that you have to know you know what you're doing. Success
is a process, and repeating successful behaviors over and over again is key.
But you have to know what is working so you can repeat what's working."

(from The Accidental Salesperson, a book about selling I highly recommend)

------
abrahamsen
Jeffrey Law, Richard Kenner, Mark Michell, Ian Taylor.

That wasn't hard. I apologize for any misspelling, as I went by memory. On the
other hand, I don't know the names of any startup founders more recent (or
less successful) than facebook.

I believe Hacker News attract a certain non-typical brand of programmers, if
they are more likely to know about "VCs and term sheets" than about who made
their tools.

Of course programmers are rarely famous (for programming) outside their
profession. That is a fate programming share with just all but a select few
professions.

~~~
ploer
Yeah, that definitely struck me as the odd bit in the article -- being jealous
of the "fame" that startup founders get sure seems like a pretty specialized
breed of envy!

------
mike-cardwell
I'd prefer to write an application which made me wealthy, than an application
which made me famous. Wealth is a useful thing to have, fame is more of an
annoyance surely...?

~~~
jgrahamc
I dunno, fame can be useful. Just imagine all the groupies that came after the
publication of The Geek Atlas.

~~~
dugmartin
I really don't want to image what those groupies would be like.

------
jgrahamc
But there is Google. And plenty of people have Googled me and I've been told
in job interviews that the interviewer had downloaded code I'd written and
read it.

------
neilk
The very _definition_ of a product is an artifact that doesn't require a human
relationship.

If you need to be in touch with the people that made it or maintain it, that's
called consulting. (You may _want_ to be in closer contact, for instance, to
shape the direction of the Linux kernel or something. But you don't _need_ to
have such a relationship to use Linux.)

Excellence in product design means anonymity for the people who made it.

------
js2
_Yep, just a system administrator_

Well then. Nice to know Zed looks down his nose at operations.

~~~
fragmede

      I hate it when people call me a programmer, I'm a *developer*; I don't *do* IT. I have better things to do than re-install Windows all day.
    

...is the title of the next rant I expect to read from Zed.

~~~
nailer
What's wrong with wanting to make stuff rather than work around other people's
buggy software?

~~~
fragmede
IT and programmers do more than "work around other people's buggy software"
all day long.

------
tetha
It is interesting to see that someone arrived at a similar conclusion as me.
However, I went a totally different way of arriving there. By now, programmers
kind of feel like pioneers and/or drainers.

Think about this for a second. Did Ruby On Rails enable you to venture into
new lands, because you are able to program your web application more
efficiently? I think so. Does RoR make your daily programmer life easier
overall? I think so, too. Thus, _someone_ ventured into a place and built
roads and paths for people to come there and to live comfortably.

However, did anyone really remember the pioneers in germans marshes, in
america? Does anyone see the drainers maintaining the life support systems in
the cities? No. Does anyone remember the first person to write a web
framework, to write a next generation language, or maintaining libraries which
easen your daily life? No.

I think this is a striking similarity.

------
weavejester
Wait a moment.

Aside from a few exceptions, most product design is unattributed. Can you name
four people who worked on the mobile phone you use? Or indeed any appliance
you use?

Of the programmers and engineers I do know about, I don't know about them
because I use the product, but because there's something interesting or
unusual about the person.

~~~
varjag
Noone designs mobile phones or appliances in their free time.

~~~
weavejester
Uh... so what? Are you saying people can only be famous for work they do in
their free time?

~~~
varjag
I'm not saying that and you know it.

If someone uses fruits of your passion for free, it would be nice to get an
acknowledgement for that, wouldn't you agree?

~~~
weavejester
_"I'm not saying that and you know it."_

I had no idea what you were saying. Your point wasn't very clear.

 _"If someone uses fruits of your passion for free, it would be nice to get an
acknowledgement for that, wouldn't you agree?"_

Certainly, but acknowledgements don't make you famous.

------
wdewind
"The famous programmers aren't really famous for programming anymore, but
instead because they created some business or non-profit. Their code can't
stand on its own as awesome, it has to be paired with some non-code fame
formation and then people can grok their concept."

Anyone read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age? There is a scene where they are
discussing tech innovation and someone says there are always three parts, the
money, the tech and the artist.

Money finances the tech, and the artist humanizes the tech. You're the tech
(drummer/bassist? linebacker?) and you're envious of the artist (lead singer?
quarter back?).

Edit: and the reason he's not really famous is because none of his consumer
facing products are GREAT. (I wont debate if they are good or very good or
whatever, but outside of his technical work he really isn't GREAT).

------
enntwo
If you use something enough, and truly want to understand it, then I assume
you know all about some programmers, and that enough others are like you that
these people can be considered famous.

It also seems laughable to think that those programmers who are considered
famous do not benefit from it in the industry.

Off the top of my head: John Resig Matz Steve Yegges Shawn Hargreaves _why

And assuming you have been to one conference, or dug a little bit deeper, I am
sure you know much of the core team and library teams around a technology too.

I am not sure what qualifies someone as famous, but I would be surprised if
these people did not qualify given the right fields.

Just because you don't know about them doesnt mean thousands of other people
don't.

------
anamax
Haiping Zhao, the lead on Facebook's PHP compile-to-C++ project, is in Fast
Company's "100 Most Creative 2010" list.

<http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2010/16/haiping-zhao>

------
10ren
There are famous programmers, but Zed's right that they don't become famous
because of their coding ability. I'd say they become famous because of impact.
And I'm thinking of the _really_ famous (to us) coders here: Thompson, Richie,
Fred Brooks, Dijkstra, Knuth, Larry Wall and so on.

These people had an impact for _market_ reasons, not for their code in itself:
a need; an idea for a tool or product; and a benefit of it that met that need
(not saying the need is first chronologically). In some cases, that "product"
was something they wrote _about_ programming, not their code at all.

Programming: unimportant. Meeting needs: important.

------
microcentury
Wikipedia seems to think his fame is not quite as clear-cut as the man himself
sees it:

This article may not meet the notability guideline for biographies. Please
help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the
topic.

~~~
abstractbill
If he's a famous anything, he's a famous _blogger_ , not a famous programmer.

~~~
steveklabnik
At least Mongrel should be enough to make the man known for his code, come on.
Give credit where credit is due.

------
pixelbath
"Famous" is also relative. I'm a programmer, and I'd never heard of him or any
of the projects he mentioned.

If you go down any particular niche, I guess everyone's famous to somebody.

------
nerme
Wow, so weird...

I'm constantly having my friends and family give me astonished looks when they
see what I can do with a computer!

I get tons of recognition! I do a good amount of web work for free... for
friend's bands, small businesses... for people that I know and love who don't
have a lot of money...

... and they love it! They get this look in their eyes like I'm some sort of
magician!

It's awesome. :)

------
pcestrada
In my experience, programmers can attain a certain amount of fame at the local
level.You can become well-known for being the author of a key piece of
software that your company uses. Unfortunately, it just means people know who
to talk to when their is a bug or a feature request.

------
CapitalistCartr
" Following his life is pointless because he's poured his life into the
software and now they get to keep it.

You've stolen his soul like an old sepia tone photo of a Cherokee warrior."

He's conflating life with soul, and ego with both. I think his logic error
occurs right there.

~~~
nailer
For me, my soul, if it exists, is in what I create.

------
shin_lao
You should care about people using and enjoying what you build.

I don't really care whether my users know my birthday or what my favourite
dessert is.

Actually, I'm pretty happy they don't know anything about me.

The author of this article needs an attitude adjustment.

------
joshu
I got recognized in an airport on a city I've never been to just this week.

There are degrees.

------
etherael
Why would you _want_ to be famous?

I could think of little more inconvenient than complete strangers thinking
that they know / understand me in some way or identify with my life or work.
This could be emblematic of my general misanthropy but I'm perfectly happy to
be the guy behind the curtain.

I'll take the money and maybe the power, chasing fame is the milieu of the
inherently insecure. Coding is one of the most empowering things a modern
human can do; not waiting around for other people to make something for you,
but to get the making done yourself.

------
mechanical_fish
Well, this is the entire point of art, right? You are building an artifact for
people to interact with. Sometimes the artifact reveals aspects of the
creator's personality, but generally that is done subtly. You're trying to
suggest and seduce, not overwhelm and assault.

(Even the arts which aggressively push the author's persona - think: a lot of
hip-hop, and a lot of standup comedy - are about selling _persona_ , not
person. Performers play characters. Even when they are playing themselves.)

~~~
Psyonic
Reminds of Hunter Thompson. He eventually got to the point where when he gave
a speech or public appearance, he didn't know if the people wanted Hunter
Thompson or "Hunter Thompson," and I think he began to have some difficulty
distinguishing the two.

------
siculars
There should be an Academy Awards or Tony's or Grammys for programming.

Perhaps Github and Bitbucket and Google Code can get together, select the core
contributors to the most 'watched'/downloaded programs, allow those people to
vote for/select other coders/programmers/contributors who should be allowed
ballots and allow them to vote for people in different categories for awards.

If entertainers can merit an awards ceremony, surely code slingers and
algorithm designers can as well.

------
z92
"[Being famous]... makes it harder because now for some bizarre reason people
think my fame means I can't code."

So true. When I hear of any famous programmer, I think the same.

------
jallmann
There is no question Zed is a talented hacker, but it is obvious he's still
bitter after his confrontational departure from the Ruby world. Which, IIRC,
was partly precipitated by the fact he felt he didn't get enough recognition
for his work on Mongrel.

See the license terms at the end of this post:
<http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1273859940.html>

------
l0nwlf
"Maybe it's Rails or Python or something. Now, name 4 people on the core team
without looking them up."

Wrong. I use python and I do know the name of at least 20 core devs. May be
because I hang at #python-dev or follow them at twitter, but I do know. As a
matter of fact if I love any project I'll know the core devs. Sorry Zed, you
lost me there on that part or else I was loving your article.

~~~
apgwoz
You're certainly an exception, not the rule. In my immediate circle of python
programmers, most of them would name Guido, Beazley and _maybe_ on a good day
Alex Martelli.

I have to agree with Zed on that point.

~~~
bockris
I don't read python-dev and I could name 7 core Python devs without even
thinking. (Guido van Rossum, Alex Martelli, Raymond Hettinger, Martin van
Loweis, Jeremy Hilton, Georg Brandl, Fredrik Lundh) (I'm really bummed that
David Beazley didn't come to mind right away. Sorry David)

------
castis
I don't think this is necessarily true. Who, involved in RoR, doesn't know
about _why. It may not be his real name but many a person still knows about
his existence. I honestly don't think he was going for fame though.

~~~
Psyonic
Eccentricity often leads to fame, even if it wasn't intentional. People like a
freak show (No negative connotation intended, but he was certainly strange).

For example, the only thing I really know about Howie Mandell is his OCD about
germs, but that's more than I know about most celebrities.

------
dminor
> Yep, just a system administrator. Still.

There Are No Famous Sysadmins ;)

~~~
copper
Well, there /is/ the BOFH :)

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/>

------
dawgr
What? I have a poster of Mark Pilgrim on my wall.

------
dsc
I'll do my best to spread this message in my mind and in others. What we do is
art, it always has been.

Say it: I'm with the awesome!!!

------
AaronM
Who's Zed Shaw?

~~~
abyssknight
Creator of the Mongrel web server that is used for Ruby web apps. Also, the
creator of Lamson, the email framework for Python and several other projects.
He has a reputation for speaking his mind, regardless of how you may feel
about it. Personally, that gives him some serious marks in my book; saying
what you mean, _and_ executing on it is an admirable trait.

I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but he's accomplished far more than I
have on a good week.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw>

~~~
petercooper
_I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but he's accomplished far more than I
have on a good week._

I don't know if you were going for a backhanded compliment there, but it sure
seems like one ;-)

~~~
abyssknight
I wasn't. I really do respect Zed and his contributions.

------
silkodyssey
If Microsoft Word were written by a single programmer that programmer would
have been famous!

~~~
giardini
Most of Microsoft Word was written by one programmer, the late Willoughby
Whigginton, formerly of Microsoft.

"Will", as his friends knew him, despaired and committed suicide after the
8,234th time an unwitting stranger greeted him yet again with the expression
"Word®, Dude!".

~~~
silkodyssey
Well the point I was trying to make was that people become famous when they
can be linked to something that a lot of people care about. We see this in the
entertainment industry where it's easy to associate a blockbuster film with
the stars or directors of the film.

This is not typically the case in the software industry where the Blockbuster
software so to speak are produced by Companies and not lone programmers. That
is to say the company is the face of the software.

I used Microsoft Word (maybe I should have used Office) because it's an
example of a software application where the company that makes it is well
known and I thought if it were possible for one person to create an
application with as large an impact as Microsoft Office has had in the world
then surely that person would be remembered.

One notable exception to the rule I think is Linus Torvalds. He still remains
the face of linux although what linux is today is due to contributions from a
large number of people.

~~~
basugasubaku
Raymond Chen tells a story that Notepad won some industry award in the late
90s, but no one at Microsoft could remember who the original author was:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/99159...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/9915989.aspx)

And follow-up post:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/99233...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/9923309.aspx)

------
mahmud
Useless rant that doesn't add anything to my life, or probably yours.

------
whatwhatwhat
Zuck isn't a celebrity? Gates? Jobs? This article is finnicky

------
popschedule
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs

~~~
rodion_89
im not sure why this got downvoted. jobs, gates, zuck, brin, page, all of
those guys are (are at least were) productive programmers and now have
celebrity status.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Jobs never coded, to my knowledge.

~~~
rodion_89
did a little research and you are right, my bad!

------
kwamenum86
"name 4 people on the core team"

Name four people on the core team at Facebook.

This is ironic seeing as the author is in part famous for being a terrific
programmer.

------
chopsueyar
Ada Lovelace?

------
eranki
i puked a little after reading this

------
earl
I read the article differently than most of you. I think Zed is still grumpy
that contributing a big piece (if not irreplaceable, but unarguably useful) of
the rails stack didn't lead to more recognition and, more importantly, the
type of recognition that's useful when it's time to pay the rent. Hence his
rails is a ghetto post -- I read it as something like, "This rails shit has
worked out well for DHH but a bunch of other people have contributed and we
haven't gotten shit. This sucks."

This post is an elaboration -- having written a bunch of big projects that are
freely available for anyone who wants to to review the code, Zed still has to
answer the usual weeder questions. It's kind of insulting, frankly. And from
his perspective, his contributions to open source and the community at large
haven't done that much for him.

I think this is part of a general problem in programming that a blog author I
follow pointed out and another poster in this thread mentioned: open source
has worked out well for eg Larry Wall or Linus or DHH, etc. But there are a
lot of people that contribute -- maybe not as main authors, but who eg make
sure all your rails db gems work with new revs of the databases and contribute
lots of little pieces -- but who don't get enough out of it to financially
justify the contribution. See the creator of Clojure essentially begging for
donations on his website in order to continue development. Sometimes, it comes
down to the simple fact that open source contributions might be fun or useful
or intellectually gratifying, but they don't pay the bills. The industry as a
whole, IMO, needs more ways to channel money to the masses of OS contributors
who aren't famous and aren't paid to do it, but who make lots of
contributions.

links I mentioned: [http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/commercial-grails-
plu...](http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/commercial-grails-plugins/)

and

[http://www.anyware.co.uk/2005/2009/12/11/do-we-need-a-
commer...](http://www.anyware.co.uk/2005/2009/12/11/do-we-need-a-commercial-
market-for-grails-plugins/)

------
hackermom
John Carmack is famous, kinda.

~~~
gnoupi
Probably because he worked on things which were entertaining, and not "tools"
to people, simply. You can find plenty of famous people in the video game
industry, recognized for their work. But you can be a wonderful tool
programmer, make wonderful databases, webservers, and else... Ultimately,
those are only tools. And people don't have especially respect or excitement
for tools, they just use them.

~~~
NickPollard
That's definitely a factor, but he's still remembered. It would have been easy
for the programming to have been ignored and Carmack to have been overshadowed
by Romero, but that didn't happen.

Amongst game programmers, we certainly pay more attention to who writes the
code, not just who designs the game or draws the art. Most gamers are more
likely to know of Cliff Bleszinski than Tim Sweeney, but programmers are more
likely to know of Sweeney.

~~~
gnoupi
Actually, nowadays, you know game designers, more than actual programmers, at
least for the big industry. You know the programmers for most indie games,
though (but there they are often designers themselves).

Besides, true that you don't really know the "big shot programmer" in games
anymore, mostly because there is not anymore one programmer, you see a full
team creating an engine. so they blend in the product.

About Carmack and Romero, I guess it also helped that Romero made a fool of
himself after the "breakup".

------
ahoyhere
On the other hand, I've written Rails tutorials for newbies and people
constantly think I'm a Ruby badass and ask absolutely no further questions.

Perceived character, reputation, and the way you make a person feel has more
to do with whether they innately assume you are good, than sheer fame.

It's so easy to choose the wrong variable when you're trying to figure out a
(social) system.

------
jlcgull
..just as there are no famous scientists anymore. Seriously, how many of you
can remember the names of Nobel prize winners after the 1960s? Fame is almost
as fickle as Luck and in many ways more so. In our day and time, being
recognized by our peers is fame enough. Aspiring to be famous well beyond your
chosen discipline requires more than genius. The right moment in time. A
moment right not just for you but for your entire field. A moment that
captures the imagination of people who have nothing to do with your work, but
can still feel its impact. And sometimes, even that is not enough. Case in
point: How many of you know the name of the person who
discovered/invented/designed Viagra? :-)

~~~
Psyonic
Also: outside of chess fans, who the hell would recognize Anand? He's the
world's best at something, and he'd probably be able to walk down any street
in America unnoticed. What does Zed expect?

------
mkramlich
Zed is to now as Eric S. Raymond was to the 90's

~~~
nailer
ESR got people to understand that GPL/BSD/etc apps were real software with
real licenses they needed to respect, rather than Public Domain Shit From The
Internet. Also: Zed's made a bunch of innovative stuff (I use his mailing list
app) that shits all over Fetchmail (which is a single hack for a limited
problem).

