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Tim Bray's Top Twenty Software People in the World

Posted by michael on from the li-nus-li-nus-li-nus-li-nus dept.

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."

10 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Ada Lovelace? by Nine+Tenths+of+The+W · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where be she?

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    1. Re:Ada Lovelace? by julesh · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yet they, struggling to find a token woman for their list, come up with some venture capitalist that nobody has ever heard of outside of Silly Valley?

      Not even Grace Hopper, developer of the first compiled high level programming language? Sheesh.

  2. damn... by dynoman7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...didn't make the list again.

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  3. Sys Admins Protest! by ellem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where's Larry Wall?

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  4. K&R not credited for C? by marcovje · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Do we want to forget C nowadays or so?

  5. What about computer scientists? by roxtar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I havent gone throught the list thoroughly but of the names I have seen I havent come to notice the names of emminent personalities from the academic world. Names like that of Donald E Knuth are missing from the list. The list consists of people who have made software which went on to become big. But that wouldn't have been possible without the academic research put in.

  6. bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The list is mostly of "computer pop artists". Where's McCarthy? (discoverer of lisp, the single most influential language in computing). Where's Pierce and Cardelli? Where's Church? How can you have Turing but not Church? That's stupid. It's not called the Church-Turing thesis for nothing, you know.

    WTF is a shyster like de Icaza (attempted to bring the worst features of windows to linux) doing on a list with Mitch Kapor (discovered the spreadsheet)?

  7. Biased and dull list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What an appalling list, heavily biased to the fashionably recent. Segei Brin may be clever, but he hasn't contributed a tenth of what Don Knuth has, who isn't even on the list.

    There are also complete fields that have been ignored, what about the founding gods of Graphics? Scientific programming? Logic programming? AI?

  8. Inventor of the Internet? by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where is Al Gore on the list?

  9. Great Moments in Computer Science by solarrhino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, when I looked at this list, I found myself disappointed. Sure, there are some big important guys, but software is more than about applications and the big picture. It's also about the technology, and creating new abstractions. And in a lot of ways, the guy who first invented debugging is a lot more important to the success of computer science than anybody listed there.

    It may be because I'm an old fart, but I remember the excitement of learning each new abstraction, either as I discovered it, or as it was invented. And it seemed to me that the creation of those abstractions are the really great deeds of computer science. Maybe nobody knows who had those break-through moments first, but I'm sure that they occured, and they seem to be to the the Great Moments in computer science.

    1) The first guy to think "I shouldn't have to rewire, I should be able to write instructions that rewire it for me" - i.e., the assembler moment

    2) The first guy to realize "I'm not just re-wiring this, I'm describing an procedure for it to use" - the FORTRAN moment

    3) The first guy to ask "Why can't I used the same procedure from different places in my code" - the subroutine moment

    4) The first guy to say "I should be able to use the subroutine in the program it already knows" - the library moment

    5) The first guy to ask "Why do I have to be the one writing down the results?" - the printer moment

    6) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a controller!" - the embedded moment

    7) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a storage system!" - the database moment

    8) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a communication system!" - the network moment

    9) The first guy to realize "I'm not just submitting instructions for it to process - it's submiting instructions back for me to process!" - the interactive moment

    10) The first guy to think "Why can't it do something else while its waiting?" - the multitasking moment

    11) The first guy to think "Why can't it show me more context while I work?" - the full-screen moment

    And finally...

    12) The first guy to think "Man, why can't this thing show me some chicks?" - the porn moment

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