30 Most Influential People In Programming | Hacker News Reader

30 Most Influential People In Programming

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7 pointsjayro13 comments

How did you upvoted this?

Seriously, HN is no longer the place where a few of well informed developers stay together. Actually the more the topic is programming, the more I read bestialities here.

programming-reddit -> HN -> please.build.the.next.ASAP.com

Not a whole lot of surprises there, but I am curious why Jason Fried of 37signals is featured, and not David Heinemeier Hansson. They mention Ruby on Rails, but it was DHH that had a larger hand in it (only hand?) than Jason Fried.

Also, the Ajaxian mention is a little off: "Ajaxian teaches people about the popular javascript language, Ajax." Well, kind of close.

I was very surprised not to see Bill Joy on the list for VI, csh, BSD and Sun.

I was absolutely shocked not to see Richard Stallman on the list for Emacs, GCC, and the entire free software movement. Sure, lots of people read Coding Horror and 73signals, but Stallman and his Free Software Foundation started a movement. Regardless of one's opinions of the FSF ideology, it's undeniable that Stallman has influenced two generations of programmers and changed the world as a result.

I cannot believe that EWD is actually "ranked" number 18 between Larry Wall and John Resig....

btw, it is not a very good list for people interested in programming languages in general.

EDIT: grammar corrections...

My thoughts exactly.

Somehow the creator of Wordpress is listed as #2. And Jason Fried/Jeff Atwood?

A better name would be "somewhat famous internet people, most of whom are programmers of some sort".

I agree - not a very good list at all. Jeff Atwood and no Alan Turing or Donald Knuth? Really?

There are a whole lot of "in-crowd" people there, but I generally miss real contributors to the area of programming languages. I particularly miss (in no particular order!) Alain Colmeraurer, John MacCarthy, Guy Steele, Alan Kay, Niklaus Wirth, Luca Cardelli, Barbara Liskov, David Parnas, Ole-Johann Dahl, Kristen Nygaard, Tony Hoare, etc. (I could go on and on, but really have no motivation to do so now...)

What is Jeff Atwood's contribution towards the web?

Giant swaths of blockquotes and randomly bolded setences.

you mean computing?

Oh my god, I totally thought it was about the web. As a list for the web it kinda makes sense. As a list of general programming influence it's a travesty.

I can only assume that this is a joke.

Several of the people on the list don't really have anything to do with programming at all.

There are some high-profile academics certainly worthy of recognition who aren't there.

There are some who have created programming languages and libraries that are high profile today, but some of them are very much more popular than others.

There are some bloggers, whose influence reflects their self-promotional abilities more than any real contribution. People might read them, but I'm not sure how many people are influenced by them!

Ultimately, the list is very focussed on people who are visible in specific parts of the industry today, but ignores many of the pioneers whose work reverberates throughout the industry to this day.

The title says 'Most Influential' which I guess means those who are more visible and talked about rather than those with the most impact or seminal breakthroughs.

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