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Re:Rock star coders by jgrahamc on Tuesday January 22, 2008 @12:10PM (#102269)
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).

Anyone tell me where I can read more?

Re:Rock star coders by mich on Tuesday January 22, 2008 @01:46PM (#102325)
Some of his (non-programming) achievements: http://www.the-elite.net/thehall/snap.htm

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.