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-st

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?