The World's Best Living Programmers

itwbennett (1594911) writes "How do you measure success? If it's by Stack Overflow reputation, Google engineer Jon Skeet is the world's best programmer. If it's winning programming competitions, Gennady Korotkevich or Petr Mitrechev might be your pick. But what about Linus Torvalds? Or Richard Stallman? Or Donald Knuth? ITworld's Phil Johnson has rounded up a list of what just might be the world's top 14 programmers alive today."

How would you know?

[drinkypoo]

You only know if you get to see their code, and/or if they are a public figure.

Github Followers

[Greyfox]

If you go by Github followers, Linus is pretty up-there. Linus and Stallman aren't great just for their programming abilities; their capability to manage their projects so effectively is a huge factor in their success.

Stack Overflow reputation

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Stack Overflow reputation indicates that you're a 1337 documentation writer, not necessarily that you know how to program.

Not exhaustive as it misses some big names...

[Anonymous Coward]

Marissa Mayer former innovator at Google and now CEO of Yahoo. She is well known for making Google Maps useful.
Brian Kernighan co-inventor of C.
Bjarne Stroustrup inventor of C++.

I would put a few of my picks above some of the names on that list.

Re:No exhaustive..

[SirGeek]

Ken Thompson - Also creator of the C Programming Language.

Re:it's just a popularity contest

[phantomfive]

More importantly, where is there code? How can you know if they are good programmers if you've never seen their code?

Re:No exhaustive..

[Anubis IV]

Kernighan wasn't involved until much later, according to Ritchie's own history of the language [bell-labs.com]. C was a direct successor to B, which was Thompson's brainchild, and he was directly involved in much of the development of C, though Ritchie was the lead on it.

People often assume it was Kernighan and Ritchie because they co-authored the seminal book on the language (the eponymous K&R white book), but that book didn't even get published until almost 6 years after C was already complete.

Re:Github Followers

[swillden]

Being a good programmer is orthogonal with being a good manager

I strongly disagree, assuming by "manager" we mean "team leader" rather than "HR manager".

Being an outstanding lone wolf programmer is of value, but significant projects are almost never single-person efforts. Real top programmers also have to be able to lead people.

Re:Not exhaustive as it misses some big names...

[beernutz]

Kernighan for SURE, but is Marissa Mayer really a programmer?