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Becoming a Famous Programmer
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Sep 29, 2008 07:40 AM
from the lemme-tell-you-about-1=1 dept.
from the lemme-tell-you-about-1=1 dept.
An anonymous reader writes "GrokCode analyzes more than 200 famous programmers to determine what types of projects made them famous. Inventing a programming language, game, or OS ranked among the top projects likely to lead to fame. Most programmers became famous through their work on only one project. The article also shows that among famous programmers, the ratio of males to females is much larger than among normal programmers."
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Submission: Becoming a Famous Programmer by Anonymous Coward
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It's the... (Score:5, Funny)
"The article also shows that among famous programmers, the ratio of males to females is much larger than among normal programmers."
Obviously it's the extra typing appendage that makes all the difference. It's a well known fact that famous programmers, like myself, type with their keyboards on their lap.
Re:It's the... (Score:5, Funny)
clever dick!
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Discrimination alive and well in... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
RMS, ESR and Gates are definetly not famous because of their achievements in programming.
ESR, I will grant, though he has written some useful tools. RMS, on the other hand, first became famous because of EMACS and GCC. He became *more* famous later on for his "other" activities, but he was originally a programmer. Bill Gates was certainly famous early on because of programming -- he personally wrote the Microsoft BASIC interpreter that was ported to many personal computers of the time (e.g., the TRS-80).
Rule #1, get a good publicist (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, there's one guy credited with Microsoft Word. Now I'd bet my pension that he hasn't written every version single-handed. Likewise Larry Ellison as the creator of Oracle - no. There are thousands of people who create each version of Oracle, not simply one guy.
This list is too simplistic to have any value, and time spent analysing it is largely wasted.
Re:Rule #1, get a good publicist (Score:4, Interesting)
C'mon. Oracle was created by Ellison and two other guys, not by the person who fixed some bugs in 2004. The distinction between the two is the entire freaking point.
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Re:Rule #1, get a good publicist (Score:4, Interesting)
Since I known 30+ people in the list I would have to say you are very wrong. While I don't know the author of Word, it would not surprise me if the 1st few versions weren't 90% the work of one person and I've used word on a unix based 3b2.
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Carmack? Torvalds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, not all of Quake was written by John Carmack, but he is credited with quite a lot he's done by himself. He's got a shadowing trick named after himself, after all -- Carmack's Reverse [wikipedia.org].
So, given something like Word or Oracle, it's plausible that the first version, or even the first prototype, was written by exactly one guy. Take Linus Torvalds -- say what you will, but the original Linux was entirely his, complete with 386 support and a multithreaded filesystem (already giving it an edge over Minix).
Oh, and I doubt any actual paid publicists were used. Seriously, how would that actually work, and how would you justify the expense? I'm sure you were joking, but actually think about this -- for better or worse, these people are famous through word of mouth, among their peers. I'm guessing most have done something worth mentioning to earn that fame.
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Infamous programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Okay so this is great a list of some very very smart guys that most of us will never directly work with. What we really need is the list of the top 1000 infamous programmers. The guys who destroy projects and create the biggest turd burger frameworks in existence. These are the people who you bitch and moan about in a bar at a conference somewhere and hear the words "you gave Hank X a job? But the guy is a complete idiot" from a few chairs down, a couple of hours later you have the Hank X depreciation society formed and it turns out that this gormless numpty has been screwing up projects since the day he was born.
A nice anonymous list somewhere that needs to include posted code to verify the stupidity level with a least 3 people from a project voting for the muppetry level.
Now that would be great so we could find out just how rubbish a person the HR person has hired and the PHB has approved.
Re:Infamous programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Here is not a comprehensive list of those programmers, but at least a comprehensive list of their collective works:
http://thedailywtf.com/ [thedailywtf.com]
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Re:Infamous programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
include posted code to verify the stupidity level
But the people who really kill projects aren't those who write the code. They're the ones who prevaricate about designs, choose inappropriate languages, tools and development schemes. The people who build-in limitations as they don't have the skill (or vision) to appreciate the implications of what they're designing or make things so hopelessly complicated - in the name of flexibility - that no super-coder could ever implement the design.
Bad code can be rewritten, but lousy design is here forever
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Fame != influential (Score:5, Informative)
Just because people know of them doesn't mean they really contributed to software development. One on the list that comes to mind is John Romero. My understanding is that he was primarily a level designer with Doom and Quake, and that he did some rudimentary coding, like menus and the like, whereas the real cutting edge stuff was of course all attributed to Carmack.
I bet everyone at Slashdot knows who John Romero is, but I bet few at Slashdot know of him because of anything he has coded.
Poor visualization (Score:3, Insightful)
What a horrific visualization - first it's a pie chart and on top of that why put in a background to obscure the colors? Someone went overboard with their charting software
'Famous' is subjective here to say the least (Score:3, Insightful)
(Disclaimer: I don't give a **** if I'm on the list or not ;))
Perhaps the right question isn't 'how to become a famous programmer' but first let's focus on what a famous programmer is? The concept of being famous is that a lot of people know you.
Let me see some hands, who knows "David Bradley" and can name what he accomplished? No-one? Why is this person then branded as 'famous' ? Sure, he wrote a handler which is in almost every Bios, but aren't there millions of routines out there used by even more million people? I mean: the guy / girl who wrote the event handler for the 'Google Search' button has his/her piece of code executed a couple of million times a day as well... The people who know who wrote that routine is probably as big as the group of people who know the name "David Bradley" and associate that name with cntrl-alt-del.
So this 'famous programmer' list is IMHO more of a list of some editor who liked to have his (her?) personal favorites in a single list on Wikipedia.
Article is missing a beard length pie chart (Score:4, Funny)
Growing a beard [codethinked.com] seems to be important to becoming a famous programmer.
Men would always be overrepresented in all ... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are more male criminals, murderers than female. The reasons are based on simply reproductive success rate differential between males and females. No matter how successful a woman is, she is very very unlikely to bear more than 10 children. A very successful man could easily leave behind dozens and in some cases hundreds of children. Two thirds of men who have ever live do not have any living descendants toady. Essentially men take more risks and bet it all and two thirds of them lost it all in the genetic race. Thus all living males today come from a lineage of high risk takers. That results in greater variation in every measure, be it with positive connotations or negative. More variation in height, weight, muscle mass, BMI and most importantly risk tolerance.
It is entirely possible that women might even have a higher mean when it comes to intellectual labor than men. But since men have more variation you will find more men in the outliers. If one is in the top 200 of any field, that person is an outlier.
The real way (Score:5, Funny)
Famous female programmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Emily Short really famous? I knew of her but only because I follow Interactive Fiction.
And I'm sorry, just because Roberta Williams was part of a husband and wife team doesn't mean she counts as half a person. If you were counting _projects_ that might be valid, but then you'd have to divide all the other programmer's projects up too.
Elaine Roberts (Score:5, Funny)
Only the greatest hacker of our time, duh.
http://xkcd.com/342/ [xkcd.com]
Why bother with those strategies (Score:3, Funny)
1. Get into game development position
2. Inject Goatse timebomb
3. PROFIT!
4. NO WAIT!. NO PROFIT.
5. SOME FAME
Why a separate "Transsexuals" Category? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not like "Transsexual" is an endpoint - it seems more like a transition path.
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply add one point (or one-half, if you will) to both the Male and Female genders?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply add one point (or one-half, if you will) to both the Male and Female genders?
Except that would make the numbers (and definitely of gender) utterly meaningless if people could simply choose what to call themselves. The premise of the whole point is that there are fewer famous biological females. Who cares what psychological issues they're carrying around? Genetic gender is the only reasonable definition to use.
I met a couple (Score:4, Insightful)
I think fame is overrated, the two I met I marked them as famous for programs they wrote in the 80s, not their current work. One was Brad Templeton, to me famous for Time Trek and Power/Power 64 utility for the Commodore PET & 64, though now he is probably best known for his work in the EFF. The second, Kermit Woodal, who wrote a while back a SIDplayer program for the Commodore 64, I met him at an Amiga conference, from my impression he is still best remembered for that SIDplayer program, which does not always help him in his current projects.
So I think becoming famous in the tech field can have a similar trap like it is to actors, through your fame, you may become typecast into some sort of programming role.
It's an arbitrary list (Score:3, Interesting)
I would bet that 95% of Slashdot readers never heard of Alain Colmerauer, for example.
And the Bard's Tale author is included, but even though the game is well known, he (now she) is not. And there are many, many other well-known games with great programmers behind them who are not on the list.
Famous? You keep using that word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Famous?
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA spends a lot of time talking about how few women there are on the list, without digging any deeper than that. I find that verging on morally reprehensible.
Looking into it myself, I see he used the list here [wikipedia.org] as his starting basis, with only a few changes. The problem I have with that list is that it includes oodles of people who I've never heard of. Since I've been a professional software developer for 20 years, and an ameteur for 10 years before that, I think in my case "people with names I recognize" is a good filter for famous. Also lots of people are named who became famous more for starting companies than for their own programming. For example, Bill Gates and Paul Allen did write a Basic interpreter once upon a time, but its running Microsoft they are famous for. Talking about way less women starting software companies should be an entirely different discussion.
I think I can make a much shorter and better list. YMMV of course:
Just to avoid the argument thread, if there was a name on the list that I didn't include, its either because I didn't recognize the name without reading the description, or because I know them for their business activites (or in one case, for his *hardware* development), not their software development.
With my pared-down list, that's now 3.5 out of 35, or %10 female. There would probably be more if I made up the list entirely myself, but its tough for one person to judge "fame" all by himself.
Still this is much closer to what has been the actual historical percentage of participation of women in the industry, (and remember, "fame" would be a lagging indicator). So I don't think they are really fareing that badly in the fame department. Its getting them into the industry we are really having trouble with.
Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
How can you forget Ada Lovelace?
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
How can you forget Ada Lovelace?
Yeah, if it weren't for her, computing the ratio would always exit with division-by-zero. We owe her much.
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
How can you forget Ada Lovelace?
Yeah, if it weren't for her, computing the ratio would always exit with division-by-zero. We owe her much.
My god, you people have no education in the history of computing. There are more. Right off the bat I think of Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org]. She was the first to develop a compiler, for the UNIVAC system, and pioneered the entire notion of compiled high level languages in an age when everyone was basically still thinking in terms of programming the bare metal with 1's and 0's.
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
In reading your post I was sort of struck with an odd thought so, well, I'll share.
There really aren't that many famous programmers. There aren't any at all other than perhaps Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and they may not be considered programmers by the masses. They are famous to you, to me, and to the /. crowd but we're such a minority in the grand scheme of things that they are only famous to a very small subset of the population.
If you ask anyone who George W. Bush is they will know. They will know who Paris Hilton is. They will probably know Madonna, Brad Pitt, and more. If we go outside of our social circle they are unlikely to know anyone on that list.
Mirriam-Webster defines fame as widely known. The second definition is honored for achievement but being on Wikipedia isn't really an honor I don't think. Gates and Hoare were knighted, I suppose they might be considered famous but, then again, who other than us knows who Hoare is?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
who other than us knows who Hoare is?
Your mom, right? Everyone knows that.
(Come on, it was right there, someone had to go for it)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
hey *definitely* deserve to be there since they created the first arcade game (Pong), first home videogames (Atari 2600 cartridges)
Pong wasn't the first arcade game (Galaxy Game was, or Computer Space if you're only counting commercial releases), and the Atari 2600 not only wasn't the first home console (the Magnavox Odyssey was), it wasn't Atari's first home console (Pong was).
Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
Oops, I misread your quote. I thought you were saying that computing itself would be a divide by zero without her. Now I see you were making a joke. Carry on and ignore my post. :)
Read the spec halfway through and hack away. You have proven yourself to be a real programmer. Salute!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you missed the fact that the post you're quoting was a joke.
Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
That's true. I forgot because after being forced to program in Ada, I permanently purged Ada and anything Ada related from my memory.
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
Danielle Berry [wikipedia.org]
Audrey Tang [wikipedia.org]
Rebecca Heineman [wikipedia.org]
If they do not prove that women can be great programmers then what else does?
Actually the only ones that came to me were Admineral Hooper and Roberta Williams.
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you needed any further convincing of the fact that Computer Science is a sausagefest, here it is.
Even most of the famous women programmers had/did have penises.
Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Can you think of any famous female programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
First female IBM Fellow and first woman to win the Turing Award, yet no one seems to have mentioned her. I think she qualifies!
Also, there's a wikipedia article about women in computing [wikipedia.org], which I didn't see linked here.
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the word "computer" once meant female programmer (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you had RTFA you'd have seen that the Wikipedia article is exactly where they drew the list from in the first place.
And for that you get +5 Informative?
Re:Who are the famous programmers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly, the wikipedia article only mentions Kernighan for AWK and ditroff. It doesn't even mention that other language that he's known for.
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Re:Protip: (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:da da da... (Score:4, Funny)
Dude...
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Re:Men bigger risk takers? (Score:4, Insightful)
True but incomplete. Society rewards people who take big risks and succeed. Those that take risks and don't succeed get a Darwin-award or a bankruptcy.
(source: homeless guy living near the subway station)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
True but incomplete. Society rewards people who take big risks and succeed. Those that take risks and don't succeed get a Darwin-award or a bankruptcy.
Unless you own a bank! :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me guess, you're one of the people who call it "playing on the computer"?
Maybe even one of the people who think that technology is the problem and having some vision of a fantastical world of old where people enjoyed a leisurely way of life with little or no worries?
If any of this is true I'm really surprised that you bother with slashdot.