What IT pioneer do you respect the most?
Displaying poll results.34671 total votes.
Most Votes
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 13903 votes
Most Comments
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Donald Knuth (Score:5, Insightful)
/poll
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:5, Insightful)
IT = Information Technology
Don Knuth = Computing Science
To me, IT is to Computing Science as Astrology is to Astronomy. ;-)
On the other hand, Adm. Grace Hopper definitely has a claim to be a pioneer. She practically invented the term.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:5, Insightful)
Ada Lovelace, Knuth and Turing are soundly in the Computer Science realm for me; I don't equate them with "IT" at all.
Even though I am not an M$ fan, I chose Bill Gates. I'm surprised to see his numbers so low in this poll!
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that Bill Gates deserves to be called an IT pioneer. In some respects yes, but on the overall I would say he is more of a business man than an IT man, his field of business just happens to be IT.
I'm not saying Bill isn't any good in IT or anything, but to my knowledge he hasn't been directly involved (as in written code) on an IT level for the things he is most known for.
Linus Torvalds on the other hand (my choice) is a symbol for that not only big companies can create software. I believe that that message is more important than anything else.
And while I agree with much of what stallman says (on an idealistic level), he is more of a philosopher than an IT guy in this respect.
Jobs again - I have no idea why he is even on that list, no wonder he figures so low.
Gates was an IT guy in his day (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying Bill isn't any good in IT or anything, but to my knowledge he hasn't been directly involved (as in written code) on an IT level for the things he is most known for.
What about BASIC?
Re:Gates was an IT guy in his day (Score:4, Insightful)
Gates was more than you think (Score:5, Informative)
You say that because you don't have a deep knowledge of history of the computer industry, other than very recent times. Bill Gates [wikipedia.org] was very, very much involved in computer programming. He was an excellent programmer, and not only did he write or co-write several of Microsoft's early products, he famously reviewed every line of code the company shipped in its first five years, and even rewrote parts of it. Even at the end of his career, he stepped down from the CEO part of the company and became the Chief Software Architect. And besides his programming, he also had the vision for where to take Microsoft's products in order to best meet the needs of consumers, and on the whole he did a good job. And I'm not being a shill when I say that, either. Microsoft went from startup with zero OS share to being dominant because customers saw value in it. That's just a fact. Bill Gates deserves his spot on the list if anyone does.
You don't know much about Stallman [wikipedia.org] either, except recent history. Yes, he does do a lot of philosophizing nowadays, but he was a famously good computer programmer at MIT during the last years of the hacker culture, quite possibly one of the very best programmers ever. He did great work in the MIT artificial intelligence lab, the for over a year single-handedly cloned every piece of software written by the all the programmers at the Symbolics AI company. After that, he started the GNU project and wrote all the tools except for the Linux kernel. He also created emacs, which gets derided these days for being too bloated, but earlier was a very popular piece of software.
Jobs had much more to do with the computer industry than you think, although he was not as big a technical force as Bill Gates was at Microsoft (Steve Wozniak was the best at Apple). Nevertheless, whether it was founding Apple in his garage or the more recent years, he has been a visionary for the Apple engineers, and he has helped move Apple in a direction that is strongly influencing fields like UI design and human computer interaction. While they may not technically be "Computer Science", they are very closely related and are often studied by anyone who does something more than make math proofs.
You really ought to read the book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" [amazon.com] by Stephen Levy. It is an excellent book and is an interesting and easy read. It is all about the history of the computer revolution, and it will fill in the parts of the story you don't know about many of the people on this list. The people you are talking about started out deep in the technical side of things, but had the vision to become more than that, and they changed computers forever. You remember their more recent impacts, which have been largely in the area of shaping companies or movements, but their start was truly technical.
By the way, I don't pick Torvalds because I don't think he's as influential as Stallman, who started the FOSS movement Torvalds joined and created the toolset to merge with his OS. I also do
Re:Gates was more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft went from startup with zero OS share to being dominant because customers saw value in it.
Bullshit. First, he didn't go from startup with zero OS share; he supplied the BASIC that ran on most pre-IBM, non CP/M microcomputers. And he didn't become dominant because customers saw value in it, he became dominant because the guy IBM wanted to buy CP/M from got pissed at IBM, and Gates had connections there -- both his parents worked for IBM as lawyers. IBM made Microsoft what it is today. Back then "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and computers were mostly just in offices. When IBM's BIOS got cloned, for a PC to sell it had to be "IBM Compatible" -- in short, run the OS and programs IBM's computers ran.
Were it not for IBM, Gates would be little more than a footnote in computing history.
And I'm not being a shill when I say that, either.
If you work for Microsoft* and don't say so you are; that's the definition of "shill".
I also don't think he's the visionary of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates (and I don't think he's a better programmer than Gates or Stallman either), and that's why Mac and Windows greatly outnumber Linux on the desktop.
Apple and Windows dominance have nothing to do with vision, and everything to do with the fact that they were shipping OSes for twenty years before Linux was very useable, and you don't have to install OSX or Windows on your computer, while if you want Linux you're going to have to install it yourself in most cases.
Your link: is there a FOSS book that I can read online rather than going to to library? I don't buy books by authors I've never read (although I may possibly have read the author, I didn't click the link to Amazon). Actually I've lived through most of computing history. [kuro5hin.org] any way.
* I don't think you do, but I don't know.
Re:Gates was more than you think (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, respect (what they poll asked for) is about more than influence or pure ability. I did pick Linus even though I don't have a Linux machine and my experience at setting one up (years ago) was a frustrating disaster. In fact, I'm pretty much sitting here with my Mac Book Pro drinking from my Apple branded Kool-Aid mug (Yes, I know. Jonestown actually drank Flavor-Aid). There are some great people on that list. There are some wealthy people on that list. There are some people I would be hard pressed to discuss their field even though I have a degree in physics myself and am no dummy. Still, I looked over the list and when it came to respect, I decided to choose Linus. His contribution to the world of computers may not be the biggest, the most profitable, or the most important by some other standards, but he seems like a good guy. He doesn't seem like a dick and seems fairly humble. While he does put in his opinion on things occasionally, his personal stance seems to be "I just mange the kernel code. Beyond that, I'm no more important than anybody else." Perhaps there is some drama I'm not aware of or am unaware of what the guy is like when you're in a room with him, but over all, I had to say he is the one I had the most respect for.
Other than that, good and informative post. If it wasn't already moded up all the way, I would have used my points to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This surprises me somewhat. If Jobs had not gone to Xerox Parc, recognized the significance of what he saw, and turned it into a commercial product, the computer screens we are looking at now might be a lot different.
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:5, Funny)
This surprises me somewhat. If Jobs had not gone to Xerox Parc, recognized the significance of what he saw, and turned it into a commercial product, the computer screens we are looking at now might be a lot different.
Your right... I work for the government checking alternate time lines. The one in which Jobs is carried away by a dingo as a child does indeed look different.
All of the monitors display a cute little Xerox start icon... There is no Microsoft at all and Gates still lives at home with his mom...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
s/Astrology/Telescope Maintenance/
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:4, Insightful)
B) IT:CS::Metallurgy:Chemistry
IT at its best is the practical application of the discoveries and methods developed by CS.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The late Admiral Hopper was responsible for a LOT more than just That Language Which Cannot Be Named.
Besides, C*B*L is not that bad for generating reports. It isn't my favorite general purpose language, and prolly not in my top 25, but I've seen it used in places where it actually made some sense.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
We all love coding, community and building something new. But at the end of the day, it's business.
(That's right, I fear no mods!!
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, making money is not the only reason to do something, despite what Ronald Reagan taught. Bill Gates was not a pioneering computer scientist, or even a pioneer in the IT world, he was just a businessman, albeit a very good one. He really did not facilitate open systems any better than IBM would have on their own, considering the fact that IBM's goal with the PC was to have a radically different, more open business model (and really, if you look at the direction Microsoft took in the 90s, it is impossible to say that they were pushing for open systems). I will not deny that Gates is a philanthropist, although that has nothing to do with computing (Warren Buffet is also a philanthropist).
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a great respect for Bill Gates the philanthropist. Unlike a couple of billionaires in my city, who pour their money into upper-class charities, civic-pride ventures, and political activities, Bill Gates is leveraging his money to change - even save - lives.
Bill Gates the businessman is just another guy who combined luck, some technical talent, and a willingness to steamroll competing products, and built a money machine. Yeah, and over here there's a guy who ate 73 pancakes in 60 minutes. So what?
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
and a willingness to steamroll competing products, and built a money machine.
Why not just call it like is? He was utterly ruthless and willing to break as many laws as he could get away with breaking.
How a person makes their money has a lot of intrinsic value. The way Gates made his money cheapens his accomplishments a lot. When I see him I see nothing I want to emulate, or would want my children and grandchildren to emulate....
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
And Carnegie and Rockefeller both are tacitly condemned generations after their misdeeds by mentioning their union busting in the same breath as their foundations.
A tarnished legacy can still perform good, but both the ends and the means matter.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought that whole story after ted Turner called him out only to learn tha Gates had given more to charity than Ted Turner, had earned in his lifetime happened before he got married. I believe he just did not feel the need to talk about it until people started criticizing them both. I may be wrong, I am getting old.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
He has given away almost all his money, and the remainder of his life, to helping the extremely impoverished. Even then, you still condemn him? And you invent reasons about bad motives lurking behind his charity?
You (and those like you) don't really care about the poor or about social justice, despite your pretensions of social conscience. You hate Bill Gates because he's successful and that bothers you and your sense of envy. You would hate him if he gave away every penny. You would hate him even if he sacrificed his life. You would make up some story about how he was not really sincere when he sacrificed his life.
Nor is malice arising from envy.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly, I don't think envy is what the people you so despise are feeling, but with the amount of scorn you are heaping on them, I'd at least expect you to put some effort into factual correctness.
Bill and Melinda Gates have donated 28 billion to a charitable foundation named after them, leaving Bill (by himself) with a net worth of 53 billion dollars.
"Almost all of his money" is not even in the ball park. "About a third of his wealth, which he isn't likely to ever miss" would be more accurate. And it appears the acknowledged primary reason for Gates giving away that wealth was peer pressure. He decided to set up the foundation because other people expected him to, and he was getting routinely criticized for not doing much philanthropy.
Even then I have heard many disturbing things about how the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is run, and how they sometimes seem to take the Microsoft approach to philanthropy (Ie. "We want to be the only foundation in the philanthropy business").
I hope Bill Gates actually is sincere in his actions, but frankly, I'm not sure I believe it. But that's the consequence of having been lied to by Microsoft over and over again while Bill was at it's head.
But you should know the saying, "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice..."
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally find Bill Gates distasteful because of the appearance of books and worshipers in the 90's, proclaiming his status as a coding guru. I don't know if the books actually said that. But the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
Coding guru? Please, I used windows and windows 95. I still remember, back in the early days, I would sit and stare at OS/2 and Linux and just revel in the fact that I could watch them for hours without a random dialog or blue screen proclaiming failure.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates won against IBM, Turing won against real Nazi's.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
And was ostracized, chemically castrated, and driven to suicide by the very country, no, the very people he helped save. We live a seriously fucked up world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Knuth? I still haven't forgiven him for the abomination that is TeX. LaTeX makes it just about usable, but someone who would create a programming language in 1978 that didn't incorporate any sane notion of scoping or subprogams doesn't deserve to go on the list.
What about Dijkstra? Not only did he invent a number of the algorithms that are at the core of modern computing and drive the adoption of structured programming, he also understood enough about low-level architectural stuff to write articles cri
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about Richard Stallman?
Stallman fought to apply the concept of scientific collaboration to progress knowledge to software development. So if you're looking for an option that caters to the "science/art aspect", look no further.
Whether you respect him or not is a totally different matter of course :)
Re:Donald Knuth (Score:4, Insightful)
"There's one huge difference: scientists do not have an agenda against private research. Why would they? The scientific method and peer review can happily co-exist with parallel, closed research."
I don't see your difference. I don't think RMS is against privately developed software but he certainly is against non-peer-reviewable, non verifiable, non third party reusable development. Hey, just like scientists about Science!
Zuse? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zuse? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Von Neumann's self-appointment as a head of the EDVAC project did more to prevent EDVAC from being the first stored-program computer (instead the British completed EDSAC first) than he ever contributed to the design of any of the
Re:von Neumann (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps less pivotal, but no Alonzo Church as in Church of the Church-Turing Thesis [wikipedia.org] either.
I'd be content to say a lot of people deserve credit for getting us to where we are today.
Other (Score:5, Funny)
Al Gore
Re:Other (Score:5, Funny)
What do you call the swaying of the trees and bushes along the information superhighway?
Al Gore rhythm.
Re:Other (Score:5, Informative)
MR. PRESIDENT, IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE TO SUPPORT THE PROPOSED NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AUTHORIZATION ACT.
WITHIN THIS BILL I HAVE TWO AMENDMENTS, THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT REPORT. THE FIRST AMENDMENT WAS ORIGINALLY INTRODUCED WITH SENATOR GORTON AS S. 2594. IT CALLS FOR A 2-YEAR STUDY OF THE CRITICAL PROBLEMS AND CURRENT AND FUTURE OPTIONS REGARDING COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS FOR RESEARCH COMPUTERS. THE SECOND AMENDMENT REQUIRES THE PRESIDENT TO SUBMIT A REPORT TO CONGRESS ON THE ACTIONS TAKEN TO ESTABLISH AN INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT.
BOTH OF THESE AMENDMENTS SEEK NEW INFORMATION ON CRITICAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY. THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY ACT IS DESIGNED TO ANSWER CRITICAL QUESTIONS ON THE NEEDS OF COMPUTER TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS OVER THE NEXT 15 YEARS. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT ARE THE FUTURE REQUIREMENTS FOR COMPUTERS IN TERMS OF QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF DATA TRANSMISSION, DATA SECURITY, AND SOFTWEAR COMPATIBILITY? WHAT EQUIPMENT MUST BE DEVELOPED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HIGH TRANSMISSION RATES OFFERED BY FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS?
BOTH SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO HANDLE THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF SUPERCOMPUTERS AND SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO MEET THE NEEDS OF SMALLER RESEARCH COMPUTERS WILL BE EVALUATED. THE EMPHASIS IS ON RESEARCH COMPUTERS, BUT THE USERS OF ALL COMPUTERS WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS STUDY. TODAY, WE CAN BANK BY COMPUTER, SHOP BY COMPUTER, AND SEND LETTERS BY COMPUTER. ONLY A FEW COMPANIES AND INDIVIDUALS USE THESE SERVICES, BUT THE NUMBER IS GROWING AND EXISTING CAPABILITIES ARE LIMITED.
IN ORDER TO COPE WITH THE EXPLOSION OF COMPUTER USE IN THE COUNTRY, WE MUST LOOK TO NEW WAYS TO ADVANCE THE STATE-OF-THE-ART IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS -- NEW WAYS TO INCREASE THE SPEED AND QUALITY OF THE DATA TRANSMISSION. WITHOUT THESE IMPROVEMENTS, THE TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS FACE DATA BOTTLENECKS LIKE THOSE WE FACE EVERY DAY ON OUR CROWDED HIGHWAYS.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS ALREADY AWARE OF THE NEED TO EVALUATE AND ADOPT NEW TECHNOLOGIES. ONE PROMISING TECHNOLOGY IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS FOR VOICE AND DATA TRANSMISSION. EVENTUALLY WE WILL SEE A SYSTEM OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS BEING INSTALLED NATIONWIDE.
AMERICA'S HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT PEOPLE AND MATERIALS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. FEDERAL FREEWAYS CONNECT WITH STATE HIGHWAYS WHICH CONNECT IN TURN WITH COUNTY ROADS AND CITY STREETS. TO TRANSPORT DATA AND IDEAS, WE WILL NEED A TELECOMMUNICATIONS HIGHWAY CONNECTING USERS COAST TO COAST, STATE TO STATE, CITY TO CITY. THE STUDY REQUIRED IN THIS AMENDMENT WILL IDENTIFY THE PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES THE NATION WILL FACE IN ESTABLISHING THAT HIGHWAY.
Gore's push for funding is significant enough that the Internet Society wrote:
In 1988, a National Research Council committee, chaired by Kleinrock and with Kahn and Clark as members, produced a report commissioned by NSF titled "Towards a National Research Network". This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway.
Anyway, the Internet almost certainly would have eventually happened, but Gore's push to make sure that it ended up in the form that us nerds like it to be (open, neutral, free flow of information), may not have happened without his help. Al Gore is no Alan Turing, but to laugh at his contributions is unfair.
Re:Other (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that geeks and funding managers (e.g. senators) take "creating" differently. Geeks take it as the thinking and engineering work, while the funding managers take it as taking the resource risk on a project. Both are fair within their contexts.
Re:Other (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing that you can quote him and then put words in his mouth. "took the initiative in creating" seems like a reasonable description of what he did: He did not build it himself, but he set the process in motion.
Re:Other (Score:4, Insightful)
"I took the initiative in creating the Internet"
Although it's ambiguous, this can easily be understood to be short for "I took the initiative in helping with the creation of the internet". That really doesn't seem an unreasonable comment to make.
You might argue that that's not what he meant because it's not what he said, but that quote doesn't equate to "I made the internet" either so such an assumption that it does is equally flawed. Taking the initiative in doing something doesn't explicitly imply that you were the only person involved, just that you were one of the people who took the initiative.
It's really just a good example of those with political agendas scouring for quotes to take out of context and finding one. The problem is, when someone gives you that quote and says "Look, Al Gore said he made the internet", they're creating context for you, the problem is, that context may not be the same as the original context, and hence, they may be feeding you a false representation of what was really intended.
Missing option: Steve Wozniak (Score:4, Insightful)
Woz was much more of an IT pioneer than Jobs. Jobs has vision, drive and is a great salesman, but that's an asset in any industry. Woz could have built the early Apple line without Jobs; it might not have sold very well, but it would have existed. No way Jobs could have done it without Woz.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I was going to post the same thing. After hearing Woz speak at HOPE a few years back I really gained a new respect for him. I'm far from an Apple fan, but I really appreciate how Woz' technical interest and hacking/tinkering instincts lead to all his achievements. I also respect his desire to step back from the business aspects to focus on personal interests and social causes.
Woz? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Woz should replace Jobs in this poll... Woz was a real geek. :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Woz was a real geek.
"Was"? Have I missed some important news?
Re:Woz? (Score:5, Funny)
> Woz was a real geek.
"Was"? Have I missed some important news?
He learned to dance.
Re:Woz? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Woz? (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely agree that Woz belongs on this list more than Jobs. And speaking of Silicon Valley originals, what about Hewlett and Packard? Not as splashy as some of the others, but certainly they made immeasurable contributions.
How can Grace Hopper not be on the list? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And if anyone thinks "pics or it didn't happen", here [xnetmedia.com] it is.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Amazing Grace [navy.mil]
Re:How can Grace Hopper not be on the list? (Score:5, Informative)
Grace Hopper should indeed be in the running, and in my opinion ranked higher than Thompson and Ritchie. Look at this:
It was her idea that programs could be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or languages close to machine code (such as assembly language), which is how it was normally done at that time.
That should secure her a second or third place spot, naturally behind Alan Turing, who showed why the whole computing thing is worthwhile.
Bill Gates (Score:3, Funny)
Grace Hopper? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worlds first digital programmer...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Grace Hopper? (Score:4, Informative)
Although Grace Hopper should have been on the list she was not the world's first digital programmer. That was Lady Ada Lovelace. Babbage's Analytical Engine was digital.
Generic response (Score:5, Funny)
What about [obscure individual]! He was, like, the father of [tangentially-relevant field and/or discipline], you insensitive clod!
Re:Generic response (Score:4, Funny)
I think you're overestimating the value of his contributions.
R2D2 (Score:3, Funny)
John Postel (Score:3, Interesting)
Where the fark is John Postel on that list?
Thompson/Ritchie for giving us the C language... (Score:3, Interesting)
And then fading into the background like all good heroes do. Guys that have to trumpet about how great they are all the time, i.e., Jobs, Gates, just F 'em. That's not to say they didn't do great things, it's just not my impression of greatness as a human being.
Re:Thompson/Ritchie for giving us the C language.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the C language was created by Dennis Ritchie, and documented by Brian Kernighan. (Thompson and Ritchie were responsible for creating Unix, which itself is closely tied to the invention of C.) But to continue the praise for C: programming language that is still in use almost 40 years later (nearly unchanged) and is still used in new programming projects earns a lot of respect from me. Yes, C was invented in 1972. [wikipedia.org]
Speak ill of C's memory management if you must, but the language was well-designed and continues to be relevant.
Hats off to K&R!
Ada! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised Ada Lovelace lags so far behind the poll. One would think writing the first algorithm for a machine would be considered of greater note that that. And that she did it in an age when women weren't expected to even know what math was (unless it was in counting suitors) makes it all the greater.
And also, where's Grace Hopper?
Re:Ada! (Score:5, Informative)
Arlington National Cemetery; Section 59, grave 973
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And also, where's Grace Hopper?
She's responsible for COBOL.
Let us not forget: (Score:5, Informative)
John Vincent Atanasoff. The man behind the ABC [iastate.edu]
Other slashdotters will have a ton of other people to suggest: let's toast to all of them !
Missing option: Douglas Engelbart (Score:4, Insightful)
No Donald Knuth??? (Score:4, Insightful)
How could Donald Knuth be omitted from this? He's far more a pioneer than Jobs. I love my Mac, but Jobs is primarily an idea guy / businessman.
WIPO (Score:5, Informative)
Why wasn't Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] on the list?
Disturbed by my own vote... (Score:3, Interesting)
I really dislike Steve Jobs these days... and in the field of IT he really has nothing I've ever "greatly" respected like some others on the list, but he still won my vote on this poll.
My reasoning behind this:
Whereas the only negative things I can think of that make me lose respect for him are:
The second and third are both only current things, and cover a much shorter timespan than the good points I listed above that. So, weighing it all up, he got my vote.
W. Richard Stevens (Score:3, Interesting)
While I'm a Unix admin/Programmer, I really admire and respect Mr. Stevens for really helping me understand TCP/IP and Unix Programming.
I chose K&R though for the C Programming and Unix.
[John]
Bill Gates Steve Jobs (Score:5, Funny)
Less popular than Bill Gates, on Slashdot.
That's gotta sting, Steve...
Re:Bill Gates Steve Jobs (Score:4, Funny)
Nothing Steve ever did got me a job. Bill on the other hand gives me job security, BRB the WSUS server needs to the rebooted again.
Missing options. (Score:3, Interesting)
Tim Berner Lee?
Clive Sinclair?
Alan Turing, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
I voted for Alan Turing.
Prior to his insights, computers were number crunching machines. He was the one who realized that any well-defined logical operation could be performed by a computer, hence just about everything we do with computers today. Including Slashdot.
...laura
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
6 of the names on that list might not have had a peaceful environment to work in if it was not for the work Alan Turing and his team accomplished in WWII. Thats one of the reasons I chose him.
The Admiral... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grace Hopper
Theo De Raadt (Score:4, Insightful)
Theo should be at least mentioned. No one else has done as much work to get vendors to open up their drivers and documentation, which benefits for everyone, whether you use OpenBSD or not. OpenSSH has made good crypto widely available and easy to use. OpenBSD's pre-emptive approach to security through relentlessly fixing bugs and other potential problems before they are exploited is a good example for the rest of the software world.
Tommy Flowers (Score:3, Informative)
Designed and built colossus, with his own money too (since the British Government thought that it wouldn't be worthwhile or work)
Missing option - Tommy Flowers (Score:3, Interesting)
The true computing pioneer was Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers, who designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer.
After the war Flowers was granted £1,000 by the government, payment which did not even cover Flowers' personal investment in the equipment. His work in computing was not fully acknowledged until the 1970s because the project was restricted by the Official Secrets Act.
Re:respect or admire? (Score:5, Informative)
I both respect and admire this man but the statue saddens me when I see it. I instantly am reminded of his bitter end, having been prosecuted for his homosexuality and eventually poisoning himself.
The statue is also beside canal street which is the gay capital of north England, showing us how far we've come.
Re:respect or admire? (Score:4, Informative)
There's a picture of the statue on his Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org], or here [wikimedia.org] is the direct link to the picture.
I have often sat beside "Big Gay Al" on the bench.
History remembers you, Alan. Rest in peace.
Re:respect or admire? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd point out that his downfall was rather more complex than "people thought homosexuality was evil". It was more to do with the intelligence community in the 30 years after the war treating homosexuals as the Nazis treated Jews: as scapegoats, ways to explain the defection of several high-profile intelligence agents. It couldn't have been that they were disillusioned by the West, so the excuse was made that homosexuals are naturally lacking in moral fibre. No-one actually believed this, of course, but it is far more palatable than even beginning to suggest there might be something appealing about Soviet Communism.
For example, read up on Burgess and Maclean in England, or Martin and Mitchell in the United States. Intelligence services are not stupid - everyone knew these guys were gay!
(Also, anyone who has been to boarding school and appears shocked by homosexual behaviour is acting.)
Re:respect or admire? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone here whose opinion is worth caring about knew who you were talking about.
Re:respect or admire? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a fool, didn't even mention I was talking about Alan Turing.
I had an intuitive notion that you weren't referring to Linus's memorial statue.
Re:respect or admire? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it just means you've passed the Turing Test.
[snare drum]
Re:Rankings (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think Torvalds, Jobs and Gates belong on this list, any more than Clive Sinclair would.
But George Boole, John von Neumann and Don Knuth are curious omissions. Without those three, where would computing have been today?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Rankings (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because making it possible for ordinary people to own computers was clearly a huge mistake.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Stallman! Not ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the fact that GNU was responsible for many of the core tools and libraries used in Linux even to this day is pretty impressive too. In addition, most free software these days is still released with some version or other of the GPL. You may not agree with the extremes to which he takes the free software concept, but his influence on the field is undeniable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
I voted for Richard Stallman, but I had a hard time deciding between him and Turing. They both did a lot to improve the world, even while being abused by many.
In the end, I picked RMS, because, while I think many would have the sense of duty to help win a war, comparatively few would stand up to authority and eventually take things into their own hands and work countless hours on their own devices to develop something, just so that they could have it freely available to the whole world. The fact that many of us here take open source for granted is, I think, the result of Stallman's vision, hard work, and the revolution he started.
By the way, when you say "impossible utopian vision", do you mean the vision of having software that we could use, inspect, modify, and distribute? Because, having lived in that utopia for years now, it doesn't seem so impossible to me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed, and looking at his programming achievements (emacs, gcc, gnu tools, ...) I can forgive him a little weirdness after all those all-nighters in front of a lethal amber CRT terminal. Linus ain't half bad either, but he had a lot more help from the community with Linux as the support infrastructure (the net) was already more or less in place (at least at the universities) when Linux became big.
Stallman however was pretty much a one-man show programming wise, and I recall a paragraph in the GPL about him
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that, if computer vendors would sell machines with Linux pre-installed, it would, if fact be ready for a consumer desktop? How is that different from Windows, given that nearly everyone buys their Windows machines with Windows pre-installed?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Andy? Is that you?
DG