Comments on: 30 Most Influential People In Programming

By: David Payne Melbourne Victoria

David Payne Melbourne Victoria — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:38:42 +0000

If lines of code in use today is a marker then probably Grace Hopper should be at the top of the list for inventing Cobol.

If you used the number of programs or total bytes of object code, COBOL might still be ahead, but it would be a fairer comparison. Forth & APL shouldn’t lose out because their source code can be MUCH smaller.
Grace invented the idea of a COBOL, got manufacturers to create & support it and chaired the committee. Not sure she invented the specific language but I feel those things were more important. Earlier she may have written the first compiler.

By: David Payne

David Payne — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:23:25 +0000

BTW I suspect jamesgosling.com is a different person of the same name. A Novell oriented network engineer, not the inventor of NEWS, Java etc.

By: David Payne

David Payne — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:44:14 +0000

As well as folk in other comments, Countess Ada Lovelace has been called the 1st programmer (a stretch), Konrad Zuse’s Plankalkül wasn’t influential but should have been. Algol 1960 is perhaps the most seminal high level language, Lisp, Forth among other pioneer efforts of major but less influence. (APL & Mandala original but not so seminal?)
Bill Joy’s PROGRAMMING prob. more important than LinusT’s who’s greatest feat is defying Brook’s law (Team Management).
Another list could be made for prophet/advocates like Vanevar Bush, William Grey Walter, Trevor Pearcey, RAS, Ted Nelson, Alan Kay & Doug Engelbart; far more important to study than Watson Jr, Gates & Jobs.

By: delgermurun

delgermurun — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:25:15 +0000

Where is Bill Gates?

By: hossein rabiee

hossein rabiee — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:23:28 +0000

I wish someday we’d like these people.

By: m.gh

m.gh — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:02:04 +0000

How can u forget “Mother of Cobol” Grace Hopper?
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how can u forget “Art of Computer Programming” Donald Knuth?
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How can u forget “Turbo Pascal, Delphi ,C# and .Net ” Anders Hejlsberg”?

By: dev

dev — Thu, 05 May 2011 10:46:01 +0000

Oh come on people :
Knuth and Grace Hopper are absent on the list

what are you thinking fellas?

By: Asad

Asad — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:01:39 +0000

where are the indians or pakistanis on this group? I’m sure there are some up there in the programming industry. ??

By: A.Arce

A.Arce — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:51:09 +0000

I personally have the utmost respect for Scott Hanselman, I follow his blog and listen to his podcast regularly, and I can see how he’s made it on this list of influential programmers; however, it’s hard for me think that he would be named over Anders Hejlsberg.

Anders Hejlsberg is the creator of C#, he also was the original author of Turbo Pascal and chief architect of Delphi, if it wasn’t for Anders, the .NET Framework would not be what it is today.

By: eglenceli

eglenceli — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:54:37 +0000

thanks for very good post.