For me, a 'rockstar' programmer is a kind of hacker that I look up too (or other programmers look up to). It's just like how maniac teens (or just any 'metal-h

For me, a 'rockstar' programmer is a kind of hacker that I look up too (or other programmers look up to). It's just like how maniac teens (or just any 'metal-heads') patronize or look at some favorite rockstar as their icon / model (or something close to this). To demonstrate my point, I'd say people like Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, Donald Knuth, Ray Kurzweil,... are RockStars! Even Jeff Atwood could pass for one to some extent :-)