Yes, Tomek and SnapDragon are great, however the rest of the programmers mentioned (checked their websites and stuff) don't seem anything special, let alone rock star. I consider a rock star someone who can solve tough problems, not create a basic database-backed website in Rails over the weekend.
It is a weird list, but I'd never heard of SnapDragon and he barely seems to be mentioned on Wikipedia. It also appears that they got his name wrong (it's Kisman not Kinsman).
He has been long one of the very top TopCoder members (for which you need absolutely superior algorithm skills to be ranked that high), I think he has also won ACM finals one year. He is very well known in the problem-solving community.
Another guy I rank very highly is Steve Newman, he also had a rating over 3000 at TopCoder, but he is not competing anymore and has started a startup Writely (acquired by Google) - now Google Docs.
Yes, programming contests aren't everything -- but I can say I've learned almost everything I know about algorithms by competing there. And algorithms are important, if you are not doing just some simple web app.
oddly enough I had never heard of tomek and snapdragon, but had heard of why_the_lucky_stiff.
This kinda reminds me of that old story about a famous doctor that could cure sick patients. When complimented on his skills, he replied that he was the least capable of his brothers who were also doctors, but less famous. When inquired why, he replied that he cured people after they got sick, where as his brothers prevented sickness in the first place, so people never know.
Great article, I love the references to Tomek and Snapdragon. Although classifying Snapdragon a rock star programmer seems belittling, considering all his video game, puzzle, and math achievements.
I work with one. The productivity is an arbitrary measure in terms of how much unit tests they write and core functionality they contribute to the project. Architecture/infrastructure has a definite skewed ratio. It's mainly all server-side. I used to work with another who was known for merciless code reviews where developers would be reduced to almost tears. I avoided him. They aren't the most social of animals but I'd hire him for a startup.
That seems to be the prevailing wisdom, but in ten years, I have yet to meet a programmer who was 5 to 6 times as productive as I am. Also, I assume I must be average, because I'm certainly not 5 or 6 times as productive as my co-workers. Maybe twice as productive, a bit more during those wonderful, 24 hour frenzies.
Just out of curiosity, where do you know these programmers, and what is used for productivity metrics?
