Top Ten Software Innovators? 246
Rsriram asks: "At our company we have named some of the conference rooms with names of software innovators. The names include Ken Thompson, Donald Knuth, Ada Lovelace, Dennis Ritchie. We need to name 10 more rooms and I was wondering who Slashdot readers would think are the top ten software innovators. Not computer hardware but software. I was thinking Von Neumann, and Linus Torvalds would find a mention, What about Watts Humphrey?"
Linus (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think RMS is a good one (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure Linus has done a fine job, but RMS's contribution is GPL and the FSF which is far greater (and more saintly).
RMS has been the most effective libertarian of modern times, people say what if the Nazis had won the war, well what if RMS hadn't have bothered.
You seem to be going for recent people? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you wanted to go more "classical" you could do people like Blaise Pascal or Dikstra or even Turning.
Re:You seem to be going for recent people? (Score:2, Funny)
SCNR
Re:You seem to be going for recent people? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, I think you mean his tape is caught in an infinite loop of read forward--print zero--read backward--print zero--read forward--....
Re:You seem to be going for recent people? (Score:2)
Re:You seem to be going for recent people? (Score:2)
Larry Wall.... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Actually, there probably WOULD be a Slashdot-esqe place, if not Slashdot simply done in a different language... BUT STILL!) It are Slashdot. We lubble slashdot. *hugs teh Slashdot*
Re:Larry Wall.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Larry Wall.... (Score:2)
Who has to imagine confusion when they can read Perl source code?
Or was that Perl? Maybe it was line noise, I couldn't tell?
what about (Score:5, Interesting)
alan turing
larry wall
bill gates ??
steve wozniak
jay miner
Re:what about (Score:2)
All the Multicians
larry wall (for rn but not perl!)
Kay, Ingalls (for Smalltalk)
Massalin (read the thesis and weep)
Cray, Amdahl, Josh Fisher (hw == sw)
Hoare (for CSP)
Pike for Pike-goodness
Jay Miner? Maybe. I bought an Amiga 1000 as soon as they were available, I played games on the Atari 800. It was great at the time.
All the graphics gurus...
Blinn
James Clark
Porter + Duff (I use rc
There are hundreds of them! Where do you stop?
Re:what about (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't agree with Woz MOSTLY because he is really a superb Hardware hacker. His software hacking ain't shabby - but his innovations were mostly in the hardware world.
Re:what about (Score:2)
alan turing
larry wall
bill gates ??
steve wozniak
jay miner
Re:what about (Score:2)
Re:what about (Score:2)
Dijkstra (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dijkstra (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dijkstra (Score:2)
Woz (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Woz (Score:2)
Re:Woz (Score:2)
Same goes for Tim Patterson who really ripped off CP/M to build Q-DOS.
Re:Woz (Score:2)
Re:Read that headline again. (Score:2)
John Carmack (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:John Carmack (Score:2)
Re:John Carmack (Score:2)
Tim Cain
http://www.troikagames.com/team.htm
Fallout was without a doubt the most innovative game of its time, reviving the CRPG genre single-handedly.
How about.. (Score:4, Funny)
- the "Hejlsberg" room
Larry Wall the creator of Perl
- the "wall" room?
Alan Cooper "father of VB"
- the "Closet"?
Re:How about.. (Score:2)
Re:How about.. (Score:2)
Re:How about.. (Score:2)
Obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
I totatlly forgot about him since I've had my account set up for the past month to ignore any article posted by him.
I find Slashdot much better this way. I thought he would have left Slashdot by now.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Katz yes, but not THAT katz (Score:2)
The internet would not be the same without Zip compression, and he made the software Shareware.
Engineers Vs Scientists (Score:2)
Think of the US military engineers that actually built the von Neumann architecture, before it was known under his name or indeed known by him. von Neumann published it first, and when the engineers found out they decided to publish to get credit. But their paper was stopped by the US military. This according to at least one account
The Book ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer [amazon.com] seems to give one opinion on who actually did what.
Linus (Score:3, Insightful)
Linus Torvalds should not be on such a list. Tananbaum was wrong to say that Linux is obsolete, but he was correct that it is of little academic interest. Linus' skill is not in innovation, it is in execution and dare I say it, project management.
Von Nuemann and the others you mentioned were theorists, people on the science side of computer science, who developed new theories. They changed the way people think about the whole field.
Tim Berners-Lee (Score:5, Insightful)
My top ten (Score:3, Interesting)
Jeff Minter
E.W. Dijkstra
Donald Knuth
Niclaus Wirth
Richard Stallman
Bjarne Stroustrup
Linus Torvalds
Miquel d'Icaza
Wouter van Oortmerssen
Larry Wall
Re:My top ten (Score:2)
Jon Johannsen
Re:My top ten (Score:2)
Miguel de Icaza? What's his innovation again? Writing a desktop because he didn't like something about the license used by people who wrote a desktop because they didn't like the license and technology other Desktops (Windows and CDE) used? Copying Outlook? Copying .NET?
how about... (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, Ada Lovelase (Byron) assited Charles Babbage. How about: John von Newmann ("von Newmann architecture"), John Backus (FORTRAN), Niklaus Writh (Pascal), Dan Bricklin/Bob Frankston (first spreadsheet - VisiCalc),
IMO, Bill Gates is not an inovator, he is a buisiness man who invented nothing that wasn't already on the market in the 80's.
Some cool people (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some cool people (Score:3, Interesting)
Edsger Dijkstra (Score:2)
Alan Kay, Doug Englebart, Will Wright, etc (Score:2)
Alan Kay, Doug Englebart, Will Wright, Chris Crawford, Doug Lenat, Jay Forrester, Ivan Sutherland
my votes (Score:5, Interesting)
John Carmack - Doom, Quake, Q3A engine, etc. Plus he works on rockets! John Carmack has done a lot to promote the state of computing today. Just look at how people benchmark PCs, "I got 1.5 trillion fps in Q3A dude!"
Linus Torvalds - He gave us the last piece to a free *nix. Who knows what would have happened to the GNU project without him.
Richard Stallman - He started the GNU project. He also should probably be awarded a medal for the most misunderstood person in the industry. There is an equal amount of FUD directed at him as there is directed at GNU/Linux from Microsoft.
Steve Wozniak - Come on, you can't forget this guy!
Steve Jobs - Now here is someone who has had an interesting career. He's also the guy who started the push to make software "pretty". Just look at OS X.
There's plenty of others.
actually, you are somewhat wrong (Score:2)
From http://www.nb.net/~lbudney/linux/bsd.html
With regards to GNU/HURD... I dunno, maybe, it's impossible to say.
Re:my votes (Score:2)
Somehow, I doubt it. Surely, no software ever gets "finished" (even TeX, which is, at least by my standards, anything but "perfect").
But Hurd was doomed to failure from the start. It was exactly the diamond-like jewel [naggum.no] type of system that was predestined to be obsolete by the time it finally arrived.
Alan Turing of course! (Score:2)
Re:Alan Turing of course! (Score:3, Informative)
Gang of Four (Score:2, Insightful)
You could also nominate James Gosling the Java guy. While I wouldn't really call Java all that innovative it has had a revolutionary impact like Larry Wall and Perl. I think you would more want names that when people say, "what did they guy who this room is named after do?" and you tell them to look it up they will be better coders for it. Thats why I nominate the Gang of Four name.
Kernhigan? Postel? (Score:2)
I know this doesnt exactly fit, but Jon Postel deserves an honor too.
Grace Hopper is a good one (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Grace Hopper is a good one (Score:2)
Re:Grace Hopper is a good one (Score:2)
What about Watts Humphrey? (Score:2)
I've suffered under his misguided, outdated and usually just plain wrong ideas about process management. I've also met him and it simply confirmed the fact that this guy hasn't had an original idea in his life. He is so rigid and clueless that he shouldn't be allowed near a software company.
Two projects. One run using his Team Software Process, the other run using a very watered down version of XP. The Team Software Process project was months late and was full of bugs. The XP project was delivered on time even though it was staffed with only about 80% of the manpower that was planned for.
MMhhhh... might I suggest the Watts Humphrey Urinal?
and some (Score:2)
Alan Cox
Bill Joy
How could you ... (Score:2)
Brian Kernighan?
K&R (Score:2)
Bill Atkinson (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a brief profile on Apple.com: http://www.apple.com/creative/stories/atkinson/ [apple.com]
One I have yet to see that is a MUST (Score:2)
Dijkstra (Score:5, Interesting)
The day he passed, I printed out and tacked this quote to my cube:
Re:Dijkstra (Score:2, Funny)
Herman Hollerith (Score:2, Interesting)
Dave Cutler (Score:4, Insightful)
Dave Cutler Fan Club (Score:2)
Don't forget the (defunct) Dave Cutler Fan Club [archive.org].
Define innovators (Score:4, Interesting)
Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper (Score:2)
B) Documented the first hardware 'bug' (literally, a bug).
C) Among those responsible for one of the first extremely popular programming languages: COBOL.
D) Looks like a sweet old grandmother in a Navy Uniform.
E) The exception that proves the rule that all computer geeks are adolescent guys.
F) Participated in both the private and governmental sectors. Truly a public servant.
Grace Hopper (Score:2)
sPh
ACID! (Score:2)
Re:ACID! (Score:2)
Probably a bad name for a conference room. "The conference has been moved to Date." "Can we get Date for Friday?"
Re:ACID! (Score:2)
Ted Codd [databaseanswers.com].
Miguel de Icaza (Score:2)
Grace Hopper (Score:2, Insightful)
MIKE MUUSS (Score:2)
Sadly, Mike Muuss was killed in an automobile accident on November 20, 2000. His work lives on in testament to his intellect and indomitable spirit -- Lee A. Butler
People who need respect! (Score:2)
John Carmack - Doom/Quake/graphics wizard
Seymore Cray - Fast Computers
Shawn Fanning - For making P2P popular and pissing off the RIAA
Chris Montgomery - Vorbis/OGG visionary
Larry Wall - There's more than one way to do it.
Theo de Raadt - BSD
Alan Cox - Linux god\
Gordon Moore - Moore's Law
Now some wierd ones....
Bill Gates - for bringing dirty tricks to the computer industry.
George W Bush - for his support of Data Mining technology.
Al Gore - For Inventing the Internet
Scott Manley - Crazy scotsman who while working as an astronomer (studying killer asteroids) decided to do mp3 radio and wrote the first mp3 streaming system, in about 15 lines of code this wasn't so much released as 'pasted into IRC for his friends' - of course... nobody knows who he is
Why not ask REAL experts? (Score:2)
Claude Shannon and Jon Postal (Score:2)
Man, I can't believe that no one else has mentioned Claude Shannon and Jon Postal yet. For those that aren't aware, Shannon did the pioneering work in information theory at Bell Labs, publishing the seminal paper for the field back in 1948. His work directly influenced the development of compression, cryptography, protocols for reliable storage and transfer of data, and influenced countless other aspects of computer science. Postal was the RFC Editor since the early days of the Internet / ARPAnet and authored or co-authored all of the key RFCs, such as for IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
-"Zow"
Admiral Grace Hopper (Score:2)
Konrad Zuse (Score:2)
Douglas Engelbart (Score:2)
$0.02 (Score:3, Interesting)
Adm. Grace Hopper
Bill Atkinson
Bill Joy
John Carmack
James Gosling
Tim Berners-Lee
I hesitate a bit to put Richard Stallman on that list; arguably his is more of a social creation.
Recent Additions: (Score:2)
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: AKA the Gang of Four
Kent Beck:
John Galt:
Ward Christensen (Score:3, Informative)
Ward later wrote the MODEM protocol which was the first file transfer protocol.
When I started sniffing around the computign scene we found that a lot of the things utilties that you needed to do things were already written and given away by Ward Christensen. He also invented freeware.
Gary Kildall (Score:2, Insightful)
Ted Nelson (Score:2, Insightful)
How about... (Score:2)
Two Words.. (Score:2)
Moderate me down if you want, trolls. I still find it funny.
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
A good portion of us owe our careers and hobbies to Gates since he allowed the home user access to a PC with a simple OS. While I don't think his OS is great, his innovation is remarkable.
--trb
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
Funny that all three games that you mention actually worked under DOS; Quake and Doom used Watcom's DOS4GW protected-mode extender, which in itself was a patch for the hugely pathetic x86/DOS "platform." And no, DOS wasn't written by Microsoft, sorry. So I'm still waiting for you to point one, ONE original idea by Microsoft.
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
--trb
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
Our only consolation might be that hardware is more advanced than it would have been otherwise, it had to compensate for software's weakness.
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
Admittedly DrDos came in a box and I had to wipe MsDos to install it but that was was the point. DrDos was much better than MsDos...
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
Um. Both Doom and Civilization came out before windows. They ran natively in DOS, which although microsoft
Re:When you say 'software innovation' (Score:2)
Gates is a good businessman ("good" in the sense of making money, not in the sense of "good business") and has lots of chutzpah, but he's no innovator. He's not even a good programmer.
Re:I wouldn't normally, but what the hell. (Score:2)
While there is some controversy over this, it is *generally* accepted (at least in my circles) that Ted Nelson [hyperland.com] who founded the Xanadu [xanadu.com] project many, many moons ago.
I had the opportunity to speak with Ted on several occassions in Tokyo several years back and I must say that he is one of the most eccentric human beings I have ever met. In the first meeting he plopped a giant tape recorder on the table and then, in the midst of the discussion, pulled out a camcorder and started recording me while I spoke. The man records *everything* for some future purpose. Amazing, really.
Re:You've got to have... (Score:2)
Re:Bill Gates (Score:2)
In a similar vein it is not clear if Linus is special either. There were dozens of Unix clones coming out at the same time and he was lucky it was his that won.
Possibly Bill Gates did do some innovation with the Basic interpreter before 1980. It seems that he pushed for using the same interpreter on different computers, while most manufacturers were attempting to make their own incompatable version. That could be considered quite important.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:2)
His major contribution, however, is that he was one of the first to actually sell software to end-users. Untill then, software was either free, or it was paid for by the manufacturer of the computer (who would make it free - why else would somebody buy their incompatible computer?).