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."

Ada Lovelace?

[Nine Tenths of The W]

Where be she?

Re:Female hackers

[TheoMurpse]

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

Re:Sys Admins Protest!

[binary42]

That and where is Yukihiro Matsumoto? I would be nowhere today without the three scripting language fathers.

Oh well... the list would be too long as there are many more that i can think of.

Game Programmers?

[deconvolution]

Where is John Carmack and other game programmers (fill your favourite game designer here)???

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...

Linus Torvalds...

[SilentChris]

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.

I have to agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the utmost respect for Turing, as he was a glowing example of gaining respect in the CompSci field despite prejudice (although it did end nastily). Being a part of the F/OSS community and being gay, I always have the feeling that any respect that I've gained would just trickle away if I came out. However, this seems to be an issue with the 'net in general [bar the specifically pro-gay communities] rather than just F/OSS. Being a moderator on a couple of compsec forums where we have the constant flow of kiddies wanting to "h4Xx0r teh f4g's M$N", I find it increasingly difficult to deal with such situations and control my anger without inadvertently coming out. It's especially hard when respected members do it too as this seems to make it "ok" - monkey see, monkey do. Then again, that's probably an occupational hazard of dealing with prejudice anywhere, not just the 'net.

Re:Linus Torvalds...

[leptonhead]

You mean Richard Stallman? Cosidering he made Linux even remotely possible I think he deserves more credit than Linus, who has got more than enough glory for his little crashy hack kernel.

Re:Knuth

[rusty0101]

I seem to recall a quip in one of the books on silly valley where a programer criticised the 'draw a circle' function in BASIC, for being poorly written in front of Bill Gates. Turns out it was Bill who wrote the function. (unbeknownst to the developer doing the criticising at the time)

Arguably Bill did more for personal computers than most anyone else out there. I would have to point out however that most of what he has done is related to his business ability rather than his software writing abilities.

-Rusty

Re:Grace Hopper

[Pathetic Coward]

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.

Re:Game Programmers?

[revscat]

I'll second this. When the original Wolfenstein came out, there were people up until then who swore that such things were impossible on the hardware of the day (80286s). But here comes Carmack and does something amazing, setting of a revolution in gaming in the process.

Game developers certainly do not seem to considered "serious" by people like Bray, but I think this is false and ultimately arrogant. Carmack is a great programmer, and certainly one of the greatest Excluding him from this list almost nullifies it in its entirety.

Silly

[ChTh]

Unbelievable that the inventor of Flash is included but none, that I can see, from the CSRG at Berkeley that designed and implemented TCP/IP, BSD etc. This list is just an expression of personal preferences rather than merits.

Re:Sys Admins Protest!

[the quick brown fox]

No kidding. 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.

Re:Sys Admins Protest!

[murr]

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.