When programmers talk shop about the best in their field, these are the names that rise to the top.
Image courtesy tom_bullock CC BY 2.0
It seems like there are lots of programmers out there these days, and lots of really good programmers. But which one is the very best?
Even though there’s no way to really say who the
best living programmer is, that hasn’t stopped developers from
frequently kicking the topic around. ITworld has solicited input and
scoured coder discussion forums to see if there was any consensus. As it
turned out, a handful of names did frequently get mentioned in these
discussions.
Use the arrows above to read about 15 people commonly cited as the world’s best living programmer.
Also on ITworld:
Image courtesy NASA
Margaret Hamilton
Main claim to fame: The brains behind Apollo’s flight control software
Quotes: “Hamilton invented testing , she pretty much formalised Computer Engineering in the US.” ford_beeblebrox
“I think before her (and without disrespect
including Knuth) computer programming was (and to an extent remains) a
branch of mathematics. However a flight control system for a spacecraft
clearly moves programming into a different paradigm.” Dan Allen
“... she originated the term ‘software engineering’ — and offered a great example of how to do it.” David Hamilton
“What a badass” Drukered
Image courtesy vonguard CC BY-SA 2.0
Donald Knuth
Main claim to fame: Author of The Art of Computer Programming
Quotes: “... wrote The Art of Computer Programming which is probably the most comprehensive work on computer programming ever.” Anonymous
“There is only one large computer program I have used in
which there are to a decent approximation 0 bugs: Don Knuth's TeX.
That's impressive.” Jaap Weel
“Pretty awesome if you ask me.” Mitch Rees-Jones
Image courtesy Association for Computing Machinery
Ken Thompson
Main claim to fame: Creator of Unix
Quotes: “... probably the most
accomplished programmer ever. Unix kernel, Unix tools, world-champion
chess program Belle, Plan 9, Go Language.” Pete Prokopowicz
“Ken's contributions, more than anyone else I can think of,
were fundamental and yet so practical and timeless they are still in
daily use.“ Jan Jannink
Image courtesy Jiel Beaumadier CC BY-SA 3.0
Richard Stallman
Main claim to fame: Creator of Emacs, GCC
Quotes: “... there was the time when he
single-handedly outcoded several of the best Lisp hackers around, in the
Symbolics vs LMI fight.” Srinivasan Krishnan
“Through his amazing mastery of programming and force of will, he created a whole sub-culture in programming and computers.” Dan Dunay
“I might disagree on many things with the great man, but he is still one of the most important programmers, alive or dead” Marko Poutiainen
“Try to imagine Linux without the prior work on the GNu project. Stallman's the bomb, yo.” John Burnette
Image courtesy D.Begley CC BY 2.0
Anders Hejlsberg
Main claim to fame: Creator of Turbo Pascal
Quotes: “He wrote the [Pascal] compiler in assembly
language for both of the dominant PC operating systems of the day (DOS
and CPM). It was designed to compile, link and run a program in seconds
rather than minutes.” Steve Wood
“I revere this guy - he created the development tools that
were my favourite through three key periods along my path to becoming a
professional software engineer.” Stefan Kiryazov
Image courtesy vonguard CC BY-SA 2.0
Doug Cutting
Main claim to fame: Creator of Lucene
Quotes: “... he is the same guy who has written an
exceptional search framework(lucene/solr) and opened the big-data
gateway to the world(hadoop).” Rajesh Rao
“His creation/work on Lucene and Hadoop (among other
projects) has created a tremendous amount of wealth and employment for
folks in the world….” Amit Nithianandan
Image courtesy Google
Jeff Dean
Main claim to fame: The brains behind Google search indexing
Quotes: “... for bringing breakthroughs in data mining( GFS, Map and Reduce, Big Table ).” Natu Lauchande
“... conceived, built, and deployed MapReduce and BigTable, among a bazillion other things” Erik Goldman
Image courtesy Krd CC BY-SA 4.0
Linus Torvalds
Main claim to fame: Creator of Linux
Quotes: “To put into prospective what an
achievement this is, he wrote the Linux kernel in a few years while the
GNU Hurd (a GNU-developed kernel) has been under development for 25
years and has still yet to release a production-ready example.” Erich Ficker
“Torvalds is probably the programmer's programmer.” Dan Allen
“He's pretty darn good.” Alok Tripathy
Image courtesy QuakeCon CC BY 2.0
John Carmack
Main claim to fame: Creator of Doom
Quotes: “He wrote his first rendering engine
before he was 20 years old. The guy's a genius. I wish I were a quarter a
programmer he is.” Alex Dolinsky
“... Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake were revolutionary at the time and have influenced a generation of game designers.” dniblock
“He can write basically anything in a weekend....” Greg Naughton
“He is the Mozart of computer coding….” Chris Morris
Image courtesy Duff
Fabrice Bellard
Main claim to fame: Creator of QEMU
Quotes: “I find Fabrice Bellard's work remarkable and impressive.” raphinou
“Fabrice Bellard is the most productive programmer in the world....” Pavan Yara
“Hes like the Nikola Tesla of sofware engineering.” Michael Valladolid
“He's a prolific serial achiever since the 1980s.” Michael Biggins
Image courtesy Craig Murphy CC BY 2.0
Jon Skeet
Main claim to fame: Legendary Stack Overflow contributor
Credentials: Google engineer and author of C# in Depth. Holds highest reputation score of all time on Stack Overflow, answering, on average, 390 questions per month.
Quotes: “Jon Skeet doesn't need a debugger, he just stares down the bug until the code confesses” Steven A. Lowe
“When Jon Skeet's code fails to compile the compiler apologises.” Dan Dyer
“Jon Skeet's code doesn't follow a coding convention. It is the coding convention.” Anonymous
Image courtesy Philip Neustrom CC BY 2.0
Adam D'Angelo
Main claim to fame: Co-founder of Quora
Quotes: “An "All-Rounder" Programmer.” Anonymous
"For every good thing I make he has like six." Mark Zuckerberg
Image courtesy Facebook
Petr Mitrechev
Main claim to fame: One of the top competitive programmers of all time
Quote: “He is an idol in competitive programming even here in India…” Kavish Dwivedi
Image courtesy Ishandutta2007 CC BY-SA 3.0
Gennady Korotkevich
Main claim to fame: Competitive programming prodigy
Quotes: “A programming prodigy!” Prateek Joshi
“Gennady is definitely amazing, and visible example of why I have a large development team in Belarus.” Chris Howard
“Tourist is genius” Nuka Shrinivas Rao
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