Famous Male Programmers

William Henry Gates III, Bill Gates, was born October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. His upper-middle-class family stressed education. Gates proved an outstanding student. Early competitiveness and innovative thinking showed. His computer interest started at Lakeside School at age 13. There, he met Paul Allen, his future business partner. The two explored machine potential, building a shared passion. Gates left Harvard in 1975.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, born May 14, 1984, is an American tech entrepreneur and philanthropist. Zuckerberg co-founded and led Facebook as chairman and CEO. He also co-founded and serves on the board for Breakthrough Starshot spacecraft development. Zuckerberg attended Harvard University. He launched Facebook from his dorm room on February 4, 2004, with roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The project began to select college campuses.

Paul Allen produced "Step" and "Racing Extinction." Allen received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2004 for "The Blues."

Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950) is an American inventor, engineer, programmer, philanthropist, and tech entrepreneur. In 1976, Wozniak co-founded Apple Inc. This company later became the world's largest IT company by revenue and the largest by market capitalization. Wozniak and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs became key pioneers of the personal computer revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Wozniak began developing the Apple I into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first marketed it in 1975.

Julian Assange acted in "Citizenfour," "We are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists," and "The Simpsons."

Rob Zombie, born Robert Bartleh Cummings, left a mark on entertainment. His four-decade career spans music, filmmaking, and voice acting. Zombie was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1965. His early fascination with horror films and theatrics shaped his career. As a musician, Zombie first gained notice as the founding member of White Zombie in the mid-1980s. His style mixed heavy metal, punk rock, and industrial elements.

Charles Simonyi (Hungarian: Simonyi Károly; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-born American software architect. He started and led Microsoft's applications group. He built the first versions of the Microsoft Office suite of applications there. He founded and led Intentional Software, which Microsoft bought in 2017, aiming to develop and market his intentional programming concept. In April 2007, aboard Soyuz TMA-10, he became the fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian in space. In March 2009, aboard Soyuz TMA-14, he made a second trip to th

Donald Ervin Knuth (kə-NOOTH; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and Stanford University professor emeritus. The ACM Turing Award, informally the Nobel Prize of computer science, went to him in 1974. He wrote The Art of Computer Programming, a multi-volume work. He helped develop rigorous analysis of algorithm computational complexity. He systematized formal mathematical techniques for this. He also popularized asymptotic notation.

William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim. He served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. As a graduate student at Berkeley, he played a role in early BSD UNIX development. He wrote the original vi text editor. He wrote the 2000 essay Why The Future Doesn't Need Us, where he voiced worries about modern technology development.

Marc Lowell Andreessen (ann-DREE-sən; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He co-authored Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser. He co-founded Netscape. He co-founded and served as general partner for Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen also co-founded Ning, a platform for social networking websites. He sits on the boards of Facebook, eBay, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, among others.

Cem Kaner J.D., Ph.D., is a Software Engineering Professor at Florida Institute of Technology. Since 2004, he has directed Florida Tech's Center for Software Testing Education & Research (CSTER). Kaner is known outside academia as an advocate for software usability and testing. Before his professorship, Kaner worked in the software industry starting in 1983 in Silicon Valley. There, he served as a tester, programmer, tech writer, software development manager, product development director, and independent software development consultant. In 1988, he worked with co-authors Jack Falk and H

Pierre Morad Omidyar (Persian: پیر مراد امیدیار‎, Persian pronunciation: [piːjeɾ moɾɑːd omiːdjɑːɾ], born June 21, 1967) is an American billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist. He founded eBay. He served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar became a billionaire at age 31 with eBay's 1998 IPO. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004. They expanded efforts beyond non-profits to include for-profits and public policy. Since 2010, Omidyar has headed online journalism.

James Arthur Gosling, OC (born May 19, 1955), is a Canadian computer scientist. He founded and designed the Java programming language.

Phillip Walter Katz (November 3, 1962 – April 14, 2000) was a computer programmer. He co-created the Zip file format for data compression. He wrote PKZIP, a program for creating zip files that ran under DOS. A copyright lawsuit between System Enhancement Associates (SEA) and Katz's company, PKWARE, Inc., gained wide attention in the BBS community in the late 1980s. Phil Katz's software business succeeded, but he faced social isolation and chronic alcoholism in his final years.

Yukihiro Matsumoto (まつもとゆきひろ, Matsumoto Yukihiro, a.k.a. Matz, born April 14, 1965) is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer. He designed the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). The Ruby community uses the motto: "Matz is nice and so we are nice," abbreviated MINASWAN. As of 2011, Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development institution.

John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American computer programmer, video game developer, and engineer. He co-founded id Software. He led programming for id Software's video games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage, and their sequels. Carmack created 3D graphics innovations, including his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes. In August 2013, he became CTO at Oculus VR.

Jacob Appelbaum (born April 1, 1983) is an American doctoral candidate in cryptography. He is an independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studies at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Appelbaum was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network providing online anonymity. Appelbaum also represents WikiLeaks. He has shown his art in many global institutions and worked with artists like Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, and Ai Weiwei. His journalism appears in Der Spiegel and els.

Kenneth Lane Thompson, born February 4, 1943, pioneered computer science as an American. Thompson designed and implemented the original Unix operating system at Bell Labs for most of his career. He invented the B programming language, which preceded C. Thompson also helped create the Plan 9 operating system and was an early developer of it. Since 2006, Thompson has worked at Google, where he co-invented the Go programming language. His work on regular expressions and early text editors QED and ed was also significant.

Avram Joel Spolsky, born 1965, works as a software engineer and writer. He wrote Joel on Software, a blog about software development. Spolsky created the project management software Trello. He served as a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team from 1991 to 1994. In 2000, he founded Fog Creek Software and launched the Joel on Software blog. In 2008, he launched the Stack Overflow programmer Q&A site with Jeff Atwood. The Stack Exchange Network now hosts over 170 Q&A sites using the Stack Exchange software.

Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux, born July 4, 1961, is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He uses the alter egos "Lord British" in the Ultima game series and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, began as a game designer and programmer. He is now involved in many areas of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later on Soyuz TMA-12.

Todd Rundgren remains a rock maverick and cult figure. He was born in Philadelphia. Rundgren absorbed various music growing up. He liked the Beatles, Philadelphia soul, and Gilbert & Sullivan. These influences shaped his future work. After some garage bands, he formed his first major band, Nazz, in 1967. The Nazz earned more insider praise than commercial success. The Nazz gained fame for a double A-sided single: "Open My Eyes"/"Hello It's Me". This was the first Who-sounding rocker. The second track was a soul ballad he had loved.

Daniel Kottke was a college friend of Steve Jobs. Kottke was one of the first employees at Apple Inc.

Linus Torvalds (born December 28, 1969), a Finnish-American software engineer, created the Linux kernel. This kernel powers Linux operating systems, Android, and Chrome OS. Torvalds also built the Git version control system and the Subsurface software. He shared the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize with Shinya Yamanaka from the Technology Academy Finland.

Brian Wilson Kernighan (born January 1, 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs. Kernighan helped develop Unix with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan co-authored the first book on the C programming language with Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan stated he did not design the C language; Dennis Ritchie did that work. Kernighan wrote many Unix programs, including ditroff. He co-authored the AWK and AMPL programming languages.

Larry Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American computer programmer and author. Wall created the Perl programming language.

Guido van Rossum (Dutch; born January 31, 1956) is a Dutch programmer. He wrote the Python programming language, serving as its "Benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL) until leaving the role in July 2018. He is now a member of the Python Steering Council.

Marshall Kirk McKusick (born January 19, 1954) is a computer scientist. He worked on BSD UNIX from the 1980s through FreeBSD today. McKusick served as president of the USENIX Association from 1990 to 1992 and again from 2002 to 2004; he still serves on the board. He is on the editorial board for ACM Queue Magazine. McKusick earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He earned two M.S. degrees (1979 and 1980) and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984.

Eric Paul Allman (born September 2, 1955) is an American computer programmer. He developed sendmail and its predecessor, delivermail, in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. Allman and Greg Olson co-founded Sendmail, Inc. in 1998.

Peter Douglas Molyneux (born May 5, 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the games Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White, plus Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. He currently works at 22Cans as the founder.

Richard W. "Ric" Weiland (April 21, 1953 – June 24, 2006) pioneered computer software, programmed, and gave money away. He became Microsoft Corporation's second employee, joining during his final year at Stanford University. At 35, he quit Microsoft to focus on investment management and charity. He became a quiet, respected donor to LGBTQ social justice, the environment, health and human services, and education. After his death, the Chronicle of Philanthropy listed Ric's gift as the 11th largest charitable donation in the nation, totaling more than $165.

Timothy John Schafer, born July 26, 1967, is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, following more than ten years at LucasArts. Schafer designed acclaimed games like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and Broken Age. He co-designed Day of the Tentacle and served as an assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. The video game industry recognizes Schafer for his storytelling and comedic writing. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from th[e organization].

Virgil Griffith, born 1983, also called Romanpoet, is an American programmer. He created WikiScanner. Griffith published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory. While making WikiScanner, Griffith stated his goal was "to create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike."

James Clark (February 23, 1964) wrote groff and expat. Clark worked much with open-source software and XML. Born in London, Clark studied at Charterhouse and Merton College, Oxford. Clark has lived in Bangkok, Thailand since 1995, and is now a permanent resident. He owns Thai Open Source Software Center, which gives him a legal structure for his open-source work. For the GNU project, Clark wrote groff and an XML editing mode for GNU Emacs.

Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – c. July 6, 1985) published, photographed, programmed, and was a lawyer. Fluegelman pioneered the shareware business model for software marketing. He also founded the editorships for both PC World and Macworld and led the 1970s New Games movement, which pushed for noncompetitive games.

ChaCha was a search engine guided by humans. It gave free, real-time answers via its website or mobile apps. Scott A. Jones and Brad Bostic founded the company in 2006. The company operated out of Carmel, Indiana, United States, near the Indianapolis area. The name comes from the Mandarin Chinese word cha (Chinese: 查; pinyin: chá; Wade–Giles: ch'a), meaning "to search."

Philip Gale, an American, pioneered Internet software development. He was a computer prodigy and a sophomore at MIT. Gale wrote Total Access while at MIT. EarthLink hired him at age 16 to develop its system. EarthLink now has over a million users. At seventeen, Gale earned about a million dollars in stock options from EarthLink for his ISP programs. In 1995, Gale's father died of a heart attack. Friends said Gale struggled with the loss. He went back to MIT.

Ahn Cheol-soo, born February 26, 1962, is a South Korean politician, doctor, businessperson, and software entrepreneur. Ahn ran for president in 2012 and 2017. He was a former presidential candidate twice. In 2012, Ahn ran as an independent but withdrew a month before the election to back Moon Jae-in. In 2017, he was the People's Party nominee against him. Ahn co-led and led the People's Party until the party changed.

Earl Levine created streaming media and audio watermarking technologies during the late 1990s dot-com bubble. He worked at VXtreme until Microsoft bought it. After that, he worked for Liquid Audio. Microsoft bought Liquid Audio's patent portfolio in 2002. Since leaving Liquid Audio, Levine has worked with many Silicon Valley start-ups. He graduated from Richardson High School in the same class as Carla Overbeck.

O. Arthur Stiennon, Jr. (November 9, 1919, Green Bay, Wisconsin – January 10, 2003, Madison, Wisconsin) was a clinical radiologist, inventor, radiation treatment pioneer, and developer in Madison, Wisconsin. Stiennon attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. He got his M.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1943 through the wartime accelerated program. He interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, P.Q., Canada. Stiennon served in the United States Army from 1944 to 1947, then completed a residency in Diagnostic and Therap.

Sidney K. Meier (MIRE; born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian-American programmer, designer, and producer of strategy and simulation video games, including the Civilization series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey. He is the Director of Creative Development at Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame inducted Meier for his work in the video game industry.

Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), known as rms (also upper-case RMS) and his email ID, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software users to have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify it. Software ensuring these freedoms is called free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License.

Ulf Michael Widenius (known as Monty; born March 3, 1962, in Helsinki, Finland) wrote the original version of the open source MySQL database. He was a founding member of the MySQL AB company and serves as CTO of the MariaDB Corporation AB. Ulf also founded and served as a general partner at venture capital firm OpenOcean.

Ron Gilbert is an American video-game designer, programmer, and producer. His games focus on interactive story-telling. He is best known for work on classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. As a student in 1983, he co-wrote Graphics Basic. He then worked on action games for HESware, which closed down. Gilbert joined Lucasfilm Games (LucasArts) and developed his own games. He invented SCUMM, a technology used in many games.

Rasmus Lerdorf (born November 22, 1968) is a Danish-Canadian programmer. He co-authored and inspired the PHP scripting language, writing the first two versions. He participated in later versions developed by a group including Jim Winstead (who later created blo.gs), Stig Bakken, Shane Caraveo, Andi Gutmans, and Zeev Suraski. Lerdorf continues to contribute to the project.

Sean Egan works as a software engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Talk and now works on Google Maps. Egan was the former project leader of Pidgin, a popular instant messaging client. He wrote the book Open Source Messaging Application Development: Building and Extending Gaim.

Ryan M. North (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian writer and computer programmer. He created and wrote Dinosaur Comics, and co-created Whispered Apologies and Happy Dog the Happy Dog. North has written The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics since the series began in January 2015.

Richard Reeves Brodie (born November 10, 1959) is an American computer programmer and author. Brodie created Microsoft Word. After leaving Microsoft, Brodie became a motivational speaker and wrote two bestselling books.