30 Most Influential People In Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#11

Post by smithjchris » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 7:57 AM UTC

cyanbane wrote: post #4

The pic of Dijkstra (#18) is actually a picture of Dr. David Gries (Cornell/UGA) who was one of my prof a bit ago. Me thinks this list wasn't very well vetted and was hastily put together for some Digg "Top X" mojo.

I think you are right. There is a celebrity culture around around the Internet at the moment. Just having a blog is enough to get you on the guest list.

What happened to Anders Hejlsberg and Niklaus Wirth for example?

Oh wait the domain webdesigndev.com gives it away. Web design is not programming proper!

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#12

Post by sorbits » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:06 AM UTC

bodhi wrote: post #10

dragonquest wrote: post #7

Frankly, the list seems put by a social news surfer and counting how many times a product gets mentioned and who its creator is. Granted since its a WebDesign site, but if you're putting the likes of Ken Thompson in there, you're probably gunning for the elders in all fields of programming. If that be the case, why put Jason Fried in there without mentioning Guy Steele. Or John Resig but missing out on Charles Moore.…

I believe Jason Fried isn't even a programmer?

He is not, and if someone from 37 signals should be on a list of influential programmers, surely it should be David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of the Rails framework).

But definitely this list is crap! From my list of “who is missing” is Alexander Stepanov, the creator of the standard template library and an advocate of generic programming.

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#13

Post by dejv » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:13 AM UTC

nopassrecover wrote: post #2

Seems telling that the most influential people in programming are listed as the developer of the web, then the developer of wordpress, then the developers of Google. Also a list that includes Jeff Atwood but not Alan Turing or Alonzo Church? On a "who is missing" list, I know everyone will always say "x is missing" but if we include bloggers Steve Yegge is more influential (and his rants will have longer lasting effe…

Simply, this list is crap

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#14

Post by loup-vaillant » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:13 AM UTC

Another contradiction: there is Linus Torvalds… and not Richard Stallman. It's like pretending the Linux kernel is more important than gcc and the rest of GNU.

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#15

Post by coolestuk » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:27 AM UTC

I assumed Alan Kay was going to be in the list, somewhere in the top 3.

After all, the mac UI concept (and hence Windows) could be traced back to him. He invented OO, and Smalltalk is still in use and his free IDE Squeak has produced one of the most amazing web technologies (Seaside). (One can even argue that Java is an attempt to combine Smalltalk with C++. )

Kay is also one of the principal leads of the Croquet project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project), pushing the concept of networking into a new dimension. Oh, and we could also trace the whole concept of laptops/netbooks to Kay's dynabook.

I think most of the people in that list should be embarrassed that Kay was not listed way above them.

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#16

Post by swombat » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:51 AM UTC

Jason Fried? Influential in programming?

I'd agree he's influential in the start-up community, but programming? Don't think so.

Hilarious that at the same time as including Jason Fried, they omitted DHH... Or Matz, for that matter.

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#17

Post by swombat » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:52 AM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #14

Another contradiction: there is Linus Torvalds… and not Richard Stallman. It's like pretending the Linux kernel is more important than gcc and the rest of GNU.

Not to mention Emacs - a pretty influential programming tool that Richard Stallman built...

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#18

Post by lispm » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 8:56 AM UTC

web programming mostly

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#19

Post by jrockway » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 9:20 AM UTC

nopassrecover wrote: post #3

Haha this comment from the original post by Roger Pence is gold: " Timothy Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Ken Thompson, James Gosling, Brendan Eich, Bjarne Stroustrup, Alan Cooper, Edsger Dijkstra, Doug Crockford, John Resig (et al) ... Jeff Atwood. Jim Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, BB King, George Harrison ... Nick Jonas. Jesus. What’s next? "

Jeff Atwood is influential. He has taught a large number of people how not to write.

Re: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

#20

Post by metachris » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 10:04 AM UTC

As other commenters pointed out, the list is interesting but more than incomplete.

RMS is missing? And I'd argue that John D. Carmack of ID software (#30) was quite a bit more influential than #28 (Ajaxian) and #29 (Craigslist).

Did you guys read that more than interesting paper on how ID software invented basically everything for 3D games when it deemed impossible? ('The Wizardry of ID' - http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sakella/graphics04/handouts/id_spectr...)