The interesting thing here is people equate pop culture with being trendy. I think it's entirely possible for a pop culture of programming to exist, but I think in general what this discussion on this thread proves is that there are multiple cultures existing within developer communities, and a lot of devs exist within many of these circles. What's more, the "pop culture" element of programming does not necessarily contribute to the rate of change! The communication mechanisms within programming (Hacker News, Twitter, Reditt, mailing lists, forums etc, that is what accelerates the rate of change within the developer community. Pop culture is actually NOT that fast. People need to spend time performing it before something becomes pop (i.e. the idea that Hipsters start all fads, because they find them first and that is how they spread)

I would say The Active Contributors--The people contribute to open source projects mailing lists etc. These people help promote certain "styles" of programming over others. They contribute to make the things that work even better. These things they create are then consumed by other members of the community.