Code Rush [VHS]

Product Description

Life on the edge in Silicon Valley - home of high tech, high anxiety, and high stakes. Take a revealing look at Netscape Communications engineers as they set out boldly and brazenly to save their company. A virtual panorama of human drama and techno-thrills, Code Rush puts you at the center of the high-intensity clash of science, engineering, and commerce.

Amazon.com

The Internet and the use of home computers has become so common, we tend to forget that every function of the machine is the result of much toil over long strings of code. To the uninitiated, this code looks like gibberish, but to the code writers, it's the lifeblood of the computer. Code Rush follows the efforts of Netscape engineers as they struggle to meet a hard-and-fast deadline to get the latest browser on the market and reverse the company's sagging fortunes. Netscape decided to take an enormous risk and open their Mozilla source code to unpaid contributors worldwide so they could accept tweaks and changes from a huge pool of engineers. This documentary goes a long way toward defining the term "geek chic" as the Netscape staff sacrifices family life, social life, and sanity to work around the clock to meet their deadline. A close-knit crew of eccentric but brilliant minds work on the project, picking bugs out of huge morasses of code, struggling to make it all work by the fateful day when the new browser is to be launched. The film follows the company through the fateful day of the AOL-Netscape merger and beyond. Code Rush also does a fair job with the larger picture, examining the exponentially leapfrogging growth of the industry and the ways that the computer and the Internet have changed so many facets of daily life. --Jerry Renshaw