The term "brogrammer" (a mash-up of "programmer" and "bro, " the stereotypical fraternity-house salute) has sprung up recently as a sarcastic take on this new breed of Silicon Valley (or New York, or Chicago, or wherever else techies assemble) computing entrepreneurs.

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Ms. Young said the start-up lost its lead programmer and is on the hunt for a new one.

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Co-founded by a programmer who got fed up with his bank, Simple aims to cut the clutter of banking through a stripped-down presentation.

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He called up his friend Robert Ross, a programmer at I.

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The programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, is up against the U.S. government and, beyond that, Goldman Sachs.

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With their small screens and limited processing power, mobile phones are a throwback to the 1980s, when a lone programmer toiling over a computer could cook up a hit game in a few weeks.

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Try starting a software company tomorrow and explaining to a star programmer candidate that he won't end up with a meaningful chunk of equity.

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At a news tour for television reporters in January, Kevin Reilly, who is now at Fox but was a top programmer at NBC when the show was still up for grabs, talked about the one that got away.

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Semiao, then a midlevel programmer, saw how skateboarding and other action sports kept showing up in TVads.

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While the programmers were dedicated, Wentz quickly encountered non-corporate behavior, such as the time one programmer on a conference call suddenly said he had to hang up to go to Costco.

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