Top 10 Programmers of All Time

1. John Carmack

John is the god of programmers. He has consistently pushed back the barriers of the fastest paced industry in the world. To keep ahead of the wave whilst still working under the pressure of having to make the final result part of a game is awesome. His innovation in computer graphics have brought us Wolfenstein 3D, Doom & Quake.

2. Linus Torvalds

Linus invented Linux. He wanted to create a Unix-like operating system for the PC and in doing so created a revolution in open source software.

3. Tim Berners-Lee

Inventor of the World Wide Web has got to be in my top 10 because of the massive difference he has made to the face of the internet.

4. Douglas Andrew Bel Doug

Wrote one of my all time favorite games Dungeon Master At the time it was a massive leap forward in role playing games and although graphics have improved over the years thousands of games still copy the inventory system from 1987.

5. Dennis Ritchie

Dennis has had his fingers in many wonderful pies these include C, ALTRAN, B, BCPL and Unix. For me his work with C has been the most influential and the C book The C Programming Language by Dennis and Brian Kernighan is one of the best programming books ever written.

6. Bram Cohen Bram

Wrote the protocol BitTorrent that allows file sharing. For me Bram made one of those leaps of imagination required to create a system that is now used in every corner of the internet.

7. Rasmus Lerdorf, Andi Gutmans & Zeev Suraski

PHP currently runs 34% of the websites on the internet. Need I say more?

8. Jez San Jez

Is probably most known for his company Argonaut (I was it’s 8th employee) but Jez also coded some of the early games and throughout his career continued to be actively involved in the programming and could always surprise everyone with his in-depth knowledge of cutting edge technologies.

9. Bjarne Stroustrup Bjarne

Invented C++ wrote its early definitions and produced its first ever implementation. Where would we be without the massive leap from C to C++.

10. Richard Bartle & Roy Trubshaw

Together they wrote the very first massive multiplayer online game. The first MUD (Multi-user dungeon) was written at the University of Essex and allowed users to interact through a text based interface.

source: http://www.nickhalstead.com/