Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers: Riding the IT Crest

Rockstars? Maybe not. But some programmers do stand out. They've improved our lives, made themselves rich and developed their own cult following. Burns, a senior software engineer at Sun Microsystems, sits down with programmers such as James Gosling, the father of Java, Chris Wilson, Microsoft's lead architect for Internet Explorer, and the hosts of the "Java Posse" podcast series, among others, to understand how some of the world's best programmers evaluate a technology problem, develop a solution and launch it into the real world.