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Comment by drats | Hacker News Reader

Speculation: you could easily get to the #1 spot on HN with a blog entitled "From Wizards to Rockstars: what's wrong with the motivation of the current generation of technologists".

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Rockstars are not such a bad model to emulate for hackers. Most rockstars are talented, passionate about their craft, spend at least a decade just honing their abilities through constant practice, spend years grinding on their projects in relative obscurity and poverty until they finally find something that resonates with the public and/or gain enough exposure to attain popularity and success after which they work even harder to capitalize on it making art and experiences that stand the test of time and attain a commensurate level of recognition, appreciation, and financial reward.

The cartoon image of rockstars as the idle rich with some inborn exceptional talent or some luck of fate that allows them to attain a life of fame and fortune with very little effort is, of course, a much less noble behavioral model to want to emulate.

"Rockstar" in the software context is the politically correct way to say "prima donna" (with all the positive and negative connotations thereof).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna

In the software context it has both meanings, which is the source of conflict over the term. An employer advertising they want "rockstar" programmers does not intend to hire prima donna's, even though that's what they may end up getting.

Ha that is so true.

Ironically I just posted a rant against that crap:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3628371

Reply on news.ycombinator.com