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Search - "wk168"
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Don't really have one but I've git to say that I find it rather cool that Linus Torvalds thought "fuck it, we need an open Unix alternative" and that a very big potion of the world runs on the kernel he wrote for a big part, now.6
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My mother.
She explained to me what “algorithm“ is. I was 14. Instant love for the domain. In 2 days, I knew exactly what I want to do with my life1 -
Satoru Iwata.
You might remember it as the former president of Nintendo, but he was also a very impressive programmer. As he was president of HAL Laboratories, he helped with the development of Pokémon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 by porting the Pokémon Red/Blue battle system not by having any sort of documentation, but by reading the assembly source code.
He did so to allow Game Freak's developers (who were only a team of 4 at the time) to focus on their work on Pokémon Gold/Silver. But he did more: when they had to localize Red/Blue for America, they couldn't fit everything in a cartridge. They had the same problem while developing Gold/Silver, since cartridges had at most 8 Mb of storage capacity back then, and they had to fit not only the Johto region but the Kanto one as well! So Iwata stepped in, and created a graphics compression tool which managed to make everything fit in the cartridges.
He did this while not even being part of Nintendo, and the work was so impressive that the Pokémon devs thought it was "a waste to just have [him] as president!" (ie. why not make use of such programming skills).
Truly someone I look up to.8 -
Linus Torvalds. He created Linux and Git, both used by millions of people. He started to create Linux when he was 21 and still in university. It is currently running on a lot of devices including Android. That is really an accomplishment, to make an operating system is one of the most complex things you can create as a programmer. It is also cool that it's open source and how it is maintained. Both Linux and Git was created because he needed them, he creates things that are useful. He could have earned a lot of money but he cares much more about tools and software than money. I think he is a great person and speaker (and he is from my neighboring country Finland 🙂). I use Git everyday in my work and it makes it so much easier. He is for me without a doubt the best programmer in the world.2
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Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler. Their books (“Clean code”, “Clean architecture”, “Refactoring”) and Twitter posts have changed the way I look at software development.5
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Richard Stallman.
Software must be free in order to empower it's users. GNU/Linux wouldn't exist without this person, and open-source would be a tired and sad joke if it wasn't for free software.5 -
Dennis Ritchie.
Can't imagine life without C, I mean what if C wasn't even invenented? What if Unix wasn't there?
Dayumn!!!7 -
Other than being an a**hole, Linus. Guy changed computing as we know it with a little pet project59
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Favourite programmer : Ada Lovelace ✌🏼
First lady programmer in the 1840s to write a machine algorithm.
CRAZZYYYYY !
Have been a fan of her since I first heard about her.4 -
Hands Down it's Linus Torvalds.
He is cocky, arrogant, moody and always speaks out his opinion which is most of the times should be censored.
Favorite Moment: Fuck Nvidia!!!!2 -
I know this is SO original, but I like Linus Torvalds best. I love that he created Linux originally just as his own little project, and now..I'm sure you all know how big it is.
He also created git, basically because he was tired of the version control systems that were already out there. Just "oh this is shit, I'm gonna write my own", and if I remember correctly, within a few weeks he had the first functional version of git.
Plus the man says that he names all his projects after himself, I think that's pretty damn funny. -
Anders Hejlsberg
The man who designed C# 🤘
I don't think I've seen him mentioned around here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...8 -
Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, without whom there would be no C or Unix. Titans. Fountainheads of technology.
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There are a couple of them to list! But to sum my main ones(biggest personal heroes):
John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of Artificial Intelligence and accredited with coining such term(sometimes before 1960 if memory serves right), a mathematical prodigy, the man based the original model of the Lisp programming language in lambda calculus. Many modern concepts that we have in programming where implemented in one way or another from his systems back in the day, and as a data analyst and ML nut.....well I am a big fan.
Herb Sutter: C++ programmer extraordinaire. I appreciate him more for his lectures and published articles than anything else. Incredibly smart and down to earth and manages to make C++ less intimidating while still approaching it with respect.
Rich Hickey: The mastermind behind Clojure, the Lisp dialect for the JVM. Rich is really talented and his lectures behind his motivations and reasons behind everything he does with Clojure are fascinating to see.
Ryan Dahl: Awww shit y'all know how it is. The man changed web development both in the backend and the frontend for good. The concept of people writing their own servers to run their pages was not new, but the Node JS runtime environment made it more widely available to people by means of a simple to use language that was already popular with web developers. I would venture to say that Ryan's amazing contributions to JS made the language better, as it stands, the language continues to evolve and new features that make it overall better keep being added. He is currently building Deno, which would be a runtime environment for TypeScript, in Rust.
Anders Hejlsberg: This dude was everywhere man....the original author of Turbo Pascal and the lead of Delphi back in the day. These RAD tools paved the way for what would be a revolution in the computing world. The dude is also the lead architect and designer of the C# programming language as well as TypeScript.
This fucker is everywhere and I love it.
Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto: Matsumoto san is the creator of the Ruby programming language. Not only am I a die hard fan of Ruby, but of the core philosophies that the man keeps as the core of his language design: Make the developer happy, principle of least surprise. Also I follow: minswan which is a term made by the Ruby community that states Mats is nice so we are nice. <---- because being cool to others is better than being a passive aggressive cunt.
Steve Wozniak: I feel as if the man does not get enough recognition...the man designed the Apple || computer which (regardless of how much most of y'all bitch and whine) paved the way for modern micro computers. Dude is also accredited with designing one of the first programmable universal remotes(which momma said was shitty) but he did none the less.
Alan Kay: Developed Smalltalk and the original OOP way of doing things. Smalltalk as a concept is really fucking interesting. If you guys ever get the chance, play with Pharo, which is a modern Smalltalk. The thing is really interesting and the overall idea of Smalltalk can be grasped in very little time. It sucks because the software scales beautifully in terms of project building, the idea of hoisting a program as its own runtime environment and ide by preserving state through images is just mind blowing to me. Makes file based programs feel....well....quaint.
Those are some of the biggest dudes for me. I know that the list is large, but I wanted to give credit to the people that inspired me the most. Honorary mention goes to other language creators and engineers of course, but it would be way too large to list!9 -
Yes.
In all seriousness, I don't have a favorite because I don't bother learning about them.
Fight me.21 -
Bjarne Stroustrup & Linus Torvalds.
Amazed by how much they've influenced the current setup. C++ & Linux were few of the best creations after computers themselves.
:)7 -
Jake Wharton
https://github.com/JakeWharton
https://twitter.com/JakeWharton
Used to not work for Google /Android, but since the entire Android community uses about everything he makes, and then everything he touches turns into gold and becomes part of the Android SDK sooner or later, because his work is so useful and good. He now works for Google / Android. He's one of the Android gods, a true rockstar dev!2 -
If can pick one it probably will be Fabrice Bellard.
Why ?
QEMU, FFmpeg
Anyway everyone who contribute to open source community deserves to be famous. -
Notch.
Not even specifically for minecraft but for the live streams he did for the ludum dares, how he made up games from nothing just inspires me big time.10 -
I don't really have one favorite programmer, there are many. I'll just add one to the list:
John Carmack -
Ken Thompson. Zero ambition but incredible achievements. Bottom up programmer, no bullshit, and a great sense of humor.
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I don’t really have just one.
Ada Lovelace, she is the reason we have everything and she is the OG
Margaret Hamilton is badass and got Apolo 11 to the moon
Steve Wozniak, the real brains behind OG Apple. And his tech revolutionized computers. Plus have you ever just watched a video of him he’s so fucking pure and innocent. Like holy fuck he’s awesome and just hella intelligent.
John Romero + John Carmack. Two of the programmers on the original DOOM dev team. The team revolutionized the gaming industry and
Katie Bouman, just got added to the list for the black hole picture -
Scott Meyers.
He's just amazing. The way he thinks, he teaches, is absolutely wonderful. He's inspired me on many occasions.
Herb Sutter.
Absolute beast of a programmer. His guru of the week series is a simple but effective way to communicate concepts and techniques in a language.
There are a lot more - Scott Hanselman, Martin Fowler, Andrew Koenig, Andrei Alexandrescu, Barabara Moo and many more.
They remind me of why I chose programming. It wasn't for money or fame, just to solve puzzles in cool ways. It's the way you can take a simple concept and apply it to great effect that brings me joy and these people do it relentlessly.4 -
I know this guy who isn't really famous, but he was the one who got me onto the programming track. He was in the initial group of Neo4j, before it was released publicly if I recall correctly. Now he's moved on to found and grow Mapillary. Having one of those people near you can really get you inspired, so even though he isn't directly famous I'd still call him my favorite programmer.
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I'm not sure if he's mentioned already, or if he's"famous" at all, but I'm a fan of Joey Hess.
Once I saw his name on some of old debian man pages and for no apparent reason, I looked up his name and found his home page.
He was a motivation for me to start learning Haskell, and also I was damn envious of his awesome lifestyle.
See shy jo at https://joeyh.name -
My second submission in week 168
Koffieschaap. Every dutch person knows him or his websites.
www.Ishetalvrijdag.nl3 -
Margaret Hamilton.
She was the director of the Software Engineering Division which developed the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo space program.
(Here Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... -
Uncle Bob, Martin Fowler, Kevlin Henney, Doc Norton, Allen Holub.
They have all taught me great things about software development, whether through books or superb conference talks. -
Might as well start off with the weekly event!
My favourite famous programmer I reckon is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, because without the work of him and his colleagues at CERN, we'd probably be struggling to talk about our favourite programmers with other people around the world - we might even still be dialing into Minitel and BBSes -
Even if he's a younger guy than most other examples, my mention is:
Jordan Walke
He's the inventor of React, which probably changed the way to write (web-)apps for a lot of people and was based on a prototype written in StandardML.
He's also created ReasonML which is not only in many ways a more fitting language to write React, but also a good systems language (props to OCaml and it's unbreakable type system). Many React concepts/patterns have their origins in functional language concepts, including reducers and hooks.3 -
I'm not sure I have a "favourite" per-se, but Grace Hopper certainly features high up on the list. We might not still all be writing in machine code had she not existed, but such "higher level" languages would certainly have been many years behind where they are now.
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Not a real programmer, ( fictional from the movies) but the funny reason i got into this field in the first place. Dr Stephen Falken fictional character from the movie "War Games" 1983 I was 12 and thought "Dam I want to do that" he really was not event the star, but made WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) Also that is my username here :)
link https://youtube.com/watch/... -
Wes Bos
Super funny front end developer which has great courses. I learned a lot from him and his humor is great and make his courses interesting and funny to watch.1 -
Richard Garriott (alias Lord British). The pionier of RPGs and great influencer of the MMORPG Genre.
Not everyone will know this guy. But the ppl who know what he is responsible for ... will agree ;) -
junichi masuda, developer and composer of pokemon r&g
i fucking love that ost, and he actually coded the game too -
Me from the future
Only because if I say enough nice things about him, he might not come and kill me when he reads and maintain some of the code I wrote the other day....
me > You heard it me from the future, right? your cool! right?... I didn't want to! There was more code like it! I just followed what was written!!!
me from the future > Run!
me > (⊙_⊙') ohh shi.. -
Davi Ottenheimer; security wizard and one of the coolest and most knowledgeable guys i know. Met him at IANS2019 and haven't worked up the courage to email him
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Frédéric Raynal: french programmer who coded videogame Popcorn in 1988. He is still supporting this game, also released android version and versions for iOS and Windows.1
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Two of my colleagues (one of them is my best friend since school)
Who lead me into quitting my shitty job I don't have fun or any passion for it and giving me a opportunity in their company to start over.
One of my best decisions in 31 years...
Its hard to learn so many new things, but I try my best and these two are great mentors.
Maybe they read this.... so, love you guys! :) -
Jonathan Burnhams
Started my career under him, learnt a lot from him....writing neat and simple code, with always 100% test coverage.
Very strict and straight forward. -
Bruce Perens. exceptional out-of-the-box thinking (busybox, electric fence) and a great advocate for the open source movement.
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Niklaus Wirth
Do I really need a reason? Kids don't know computers before him, and people my age will know him and his contributions2 -
Surma because he’s awesome. Great blog posts, videos, and a great sense of humour.
https://twitter.com/DasSurma1 -
I'll add Jamie Zawinski to the list as well. He was the main driving force of the creation of Mozilla, and is also the creator of XScreenSaver.
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Joe Armstrong.
Because he gave us Psychobitch (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
His British humor,... just watch some talks..1