A recent Tweet by @ben got me thinking, there many people out there that have made massive contributions to code and computers in general. Without these people It nearly wouldn't be the same as it would be today.
Such as Grace Hopper:
Often referred to as the first women in software she designed and created the first compiler in her spare time. Additionally she was one of the first programmers to start working on the Harvard Mark I. She has done a lot in the computer science world, everything from being an Navy rear admiral, creating the compiler to creating COBOL one of the first high level programming languages ever made.
Tim Berners-Lee:
Does this man need an introduction? The reason why we're all tweeting away, facebooking and able to interact with millions of people over a computer is because this man invented the world wide web.
There are many more people that have made contributions to the technology today. Who do you think has made a significant impact for development, and tech?
Top comments (4)
I can think of Steve Wozniak or Linus Torvalds. But my all times favorite is Alan Turing. A great man that invented computer and therefore IT. Saves millions of lives and then die alone reject by his own government (spoiler alert). Watch "The Imitation Game", not a 10/10 movie, but a great history lesson.
My first reaction is everything from these books:
I love coding history books. Here are some I'd recommend.
Ben Halpern
One less-known legend that comes to mind is the solo maintainer of
curl
, who has just been plugging away for about two decades.This is the sort of stuff solo maintainers get up to:
curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2011-10/0059...
😄
I recall @ben opining a while back that there should be a podcast dedicated to the open-source heroes who maintain projects for the betterment of the community. I would love to see that happen some day (and listen to it).
I'd love to have this form of podcast around. It would be really interesting to hear.