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Tim Bray's Top Twenty Software People in the World
jg21 writes "Although this reader-compiled list of software development's giants omits pioneers like George Boole, John Louis von Neumann, and the 'Forgotten Father of the Computer' John Vincent Atanasoff - among others - it does a pretty good job of mapping the Code Masters, from Alan Turing who gave us the algorithm, to Klaus Knopper the one-man band behind Knoppix. They're mostly here - the inventors of C, C++, C#, Java, and Python; example. There are a couple of programmers who have snuck in more for their business acumen than their programming talent, like the former Powersoft/Sybase CEO Mitchell Kertzman but otherwise the 40 nominees seem pretty 'pure' and the overall idea is to narrow the list down to the Top Twenty Software People in the World - a phrase invented by Tim Bray, who blogged that Adam Bosworth would be among them. Be careful what you wish for when blogging - looks like Bray's about to find out who the community thinks the the 19 others are."
Where be she?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
your post made me think of an interesting cultural thing about japan i heard here (in japan)
typing was always considered "women's work" so when computers came about, and computers were equated with typing, so computers became "women's tools" by extension
only recently have computers become popular with men...one reason is that cute girls are featured on the covers of many computer magazines...much like hot rod magazines in the states
except personally i prefer the girls in the computer magazines
I couldnt understand why he is not greater and more important than such as Don Ferguson: Inventor of the J2EE application server at IBM, or even Jon Gay: The "Father of Flash". ???
Is flash a ground-breaking application like 3D game/movie engine development? At least, 95% flahes i ve seen is for annoying web adverts...
I'm not sure I agree with him getting the most "votes" at this point (scroll down the page). Excellent coder, good "top-level" thinker, but would I really put him in front of the guys who made Unix, Java, and even the web? Definitely not.
Only living people are on this list, so Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing are disqualified.
OTOH, the only reason to have Ann Winblad is to piss off Bill Gates - his ex-girlfriend is here; he isn't.
I'm not a Perl fan, but if Guido van Rossum is on the list of nominees, Larry Wall really ought to be as well.
I am a Perl fan, and though I respect van Rossum's abilities and accomplishments, Larry Wall also wrote patch, rn, and metaconfig, so he has a broader impact on Unix culture.