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Top Ten Software Innovators?

Posted by Cliff on from the new-naming-conventions dept.

Rsriram asks: "At our company we have named some of the conference rooms with names of software innovators. The names include Ken Thompson, Donald Knuth, Ada Lovelace, Dennis Ritchie. We need to name 10 more rooms and I was wondering who Slashdot readers would think are the top ten software innovators. Not computer hardware but software. I was thinking Von Neumann, and Linus Torvalds would find a mention, What about Watts Humphrey?"

12 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Larry Wall.... by HaloZero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Idolize he who gave us Perl. Without perl, there would be no slashdot. o_O Think about THAT one. :p

    (Actually, there probably WOULD be a Slashdot-esqe place, if not Slashdot simply done in a different language... BUT STILL!) It are Slashdot. We lubble slashdot. *hugs teh Slashdot*

    --
    Informatus Technologicus
  2. what about by Prowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    tim berners-lee
    alan turing
    larry wall
    bill gates ??
    steve wozniak
    jay miner

    --
    That man tried to kill mah Daddy
    1. Re:what about by stevew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd agree with gates being here - he hacked together a reasonable Basic for uP's before anyone else did. (I lived through the era ;-)
      I can't agree with Woz MOSTLY because he is really a superb Hardware hacker. His software hacking ain't shabby - but his innovations were mostly in the hardware world.

      --
      Have you compiled your kernel today??
  3. John Carmack by Electrum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    John Carmack started the genre of 3D games on the PC. When it comes to games, who else do you think of?

  4. My top ten by Koos+Baster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My favorites:

    Jeff Minter
    E.W. Dijkstra
    Donald Knuth
    Niclaus Wirth
    Richard Stallman
    Bjarne Stroustrup
    Linus Torvalds
    Miquel d'Icaza
    Wouter van Oortmerssen
    Larry Wall

  5. Some cool people by __past__ · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • Edsger Dijkstra, for stuff ranging from the shortest-path algorithm to "Basic considered harmful".
    • Turing and Babbage for the fundaments of CS
    • Alan Kay, inventor of smalltalk and the term "Object-Oriented Programming"
    • Fred Brooks, author of the Mythical Man Month
    • J. McCarthy, who developed Lisp by accident
    --
    Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
    1. Re:Some cool people by __past__ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Duh. GOTO is harmful. Basic only makes you mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
  6. my votes by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Larry Wall - This guy is great. He created Perl, a fun, interesting language with great obfuscation potential! - disclaimer: I earn a living writing Perl ;-)

    John Carmack - Doom, Quake, Q3A engine, etc. Plus he works on rockets! John Carmack has done a lot to promote the state of computing today. Just look at how people benchmark PCs, "I got 1.5 trillion fps in Q3A dude!"

    Linus Torvalds - He gave us the last piece to a free *nix. Who knows what would have happened to the GNU project without him.

    Richard Stallman - He started the GNU project. He also should probably be awarded a medal for the most misunderstood person in the industry. There is an equal amount of FUD directed at him as there is directed at GNU/Linux from Microsoft.

    Steve Wozniak - Come on, you can't forget this guy!

    Steve Jobs - Now here is someone who has had an interesting career. He's also the guy who started the push to make software "pretty". Just look at OS X.

    There's plenty of others.

    --
    Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
  7. Grace Hopper is a good one by budalite · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Grace Murray Hopper (bio can be found at The History of Computing ), generally credited with "developing the first compiler and who led the effort in the 60's to develop COBOL." Cool lady.

  8. Dijkstra by Hard_Code · · Score: 5, Interesting
    How about the recently late Edsger Dijkstra.

    The day he passed, I printed out and tacked this quote to my cube:

    "I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me"
    --Edsger Dijkstra
    --

    It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  9. Define innovators by Ivan+Raikov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With the exception of Donald Knuth, all of the names you list are of people who had mostly engineering contributions, as opposed to bringing scientific advancements in the field (although the two are somewhat related). Did you mean to exclude the people who created and formalized computer science? If not, then you most definitely want to include Alan Turing, Edsger Dijsktra, C. Antony R. Hoare, Niklaus Wirth, and Marvin Minsky.

    --
    Bush Lies Watch
  10. $0.02 by Viqsi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here's a few I'd want to second:

    Adm. Grace Hopper
    Bill Atkinson
    Bill Joy
    John Carmack
    James Gosling
    Tim Berners-Lee

    I hesitate a bit to put Richard Stallman on that list; arguably his is more of a social creation.

    --

    --
    viqsi - See "vixen"
    If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.