Monday, March 18, 2013
Top 10 Programming Legends
#10 Richard Brodie
Richard Brodie created Microsoft Word. Brodie joined Microsoft in 1982 as 77th employee, and a founding member of the Microsoft Application Division.
Brodie distinguished himself at Microsoft by creating the first version of Microsoft Word in less than seven months. In addition to primary authorship of Microsoft Word, Brodie wrote Microsoft's first C compiler, the original version of Notepad, and Word for the IBM PC Jr.
The Microsoft Word was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS, the Apple Macintosh, the AT&T Unix PC, Atari ST, SCO UNIX, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. It is a component of the Microsoft Office software system; it is also sold as a standalone product and included in Microsoft Works Suite.
#9 Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf is a technologist, computer programmer, and an important figure in the open-source software movement.
He was a primary developer of the Apache Web server, the most popular web server software on the Internet, and a founding member of the Apache Group, which later became the Apache Software Foundation. Behlendorf served as President of the Foundation for three years. Behlendorf has served on the board of the Mozilla Foundation since 2003.
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, is a web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently named Oracle iPlanet Web Server). Typically Apache is run on a Unix-like operating system, and was developed for use on Linux, but now the application is available for a wide variety of operating systems— Unix, Solaris, Novell NetWare, OS X, Microsoft Windows, and others.
#8 Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict is a Finnish American software engineer and hacker, who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel operating system. After learning UNIX at university, he began to develop what would be his thesis: Linux. Since the publication of the Linux code in 1991, today millions of people use on their personal computers.
He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator. He also created the revision control system Git as well as the diving log software Subsurface. He was honored, along with Shinya Yamanaka, with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland "in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel".
Torvalds was assisted minix programmers, so that his birth was entirely collective, with programmers around the world joining to help.
#7 Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era."
Ritchie was best known as the creator of the C programming language, a key developer of the Unix operating system, and co-author of the book The C Programming Language, and was the 'R' in K&R (a common reference to the book's authors Kernighan and Ritchie). Ritchie worked together with Ken Thompson, the scientist credited with writing the original Unix; one of Ritchie's most important contributions to Unix was its porting to different machines and platforms.
The C language is widely used today in application, operating system, and embedded system development, and its influence is seen in most modern programming languages. Unix has also been influential, establishing concepts and principles that are now precepts of computing.
#6 Adi Shamir
Adi Shamir is an Israeli cryptographer. He is a co-inventor of the RSA algorithm (along with Ron Rivest and Len Adleman), a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme (along with Uriel Feige and Amos Fiat), one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis and has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer science.
RSA is an algorithm for public-key cryptography that is based on the presumed difficulty of factoring large integers, the factoring problem.
In cryptography, the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme is a type of parallel zero-knowledge proof developed by Uriel Feige, Amos Fiat, and Adi Shamir in 1988. like all zero-knowledge proofs, the Feige-Fiat-Shamir Identification Scheme allows one party, Peggy, to prove to another party, Victor, that she possesses secret information without revealing to Victor what that secret information is.
Differential cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis applicable primarily to block ciphers, but also to stream ciphers and cryptographic hash functions. In the broadest sense, it is the study of how differences in an input can affect the resultant difference at the output.
#5 Alan Cooper
Cooper is known for his role in the “humanization” of software development and Visual Basic for Microsoft. He was recognized as the “Father of Visual Basic."
In 1988, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language (code-named “Ruby”) that allowed Windows users to build “Finder”-like shells. He called it “a shell construction set." After demonstrating Ruby to Bill Gates, Microsoft purchased it. At the time, Gates commented that the innovation would have a “profound effect” on their entire product line. Microsoft decided not to release the product as a shell for users, but rather to transform it into a professional development tool from their QuickBASIC programming language called Visual Basic, which proved to be that Visual Basic was used widespread business application development for Windows computers.
#4 John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz
These two programmers were in charge back in the ’60s, in developing the BASIC programming. BASIC was the first high-level program to use simple language. It is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to do. The presence of an easy-to-learn language such as BASIC on these early personal computers allowed small business owners to develop their own custom application software, leading to widespread use of these computers in businesses that previously did not have access to computing technology.
They also developed Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, or DTSS for short. It was the first large-scale time-sharing system to be implemented successfully.
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.
#3 Bill Gates
After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen, the other cofounder of Microsoft, did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC.
After this success the duo named their partnership as "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque.
Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2.
Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences caused the partnership to deteriorate. It ended in 1991, when Gates led Microsoft to develop a version of OS/2 independently from IBM.
#2 Alan Turing
Alan was highly influential in the development of computer science, giving a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
The Turing machine, also called ad "a-machine" (automatic machine), is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.
Turner described the machine as “It consisted of an unlimited memory capacity obtained in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol could be printed. At any moment there is one symbol in the machine; it is called the scanned symbol. The machine can alter the scanned symbol and its behavior is in part determined by that symbol, but the symbols on the tape elsewhere do not affect the behavior of the machine.” This is how modern computers work too.
#1 Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was daughter of poet Lord Byron. She was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine. Because of this, she is often considered the world's first computer programmer.
Between 1842 and 1843, she translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with an elaborate set of notes of her own, simply called Notes. These notes contain what is considered the first computer program – that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also developed a vision on the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities
The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace.
