Famous Programmers

William Henry Gates III, known as Bill Gates, was born October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Raised in an upper-middle-class family that valued education, Gates was an outstanding student with early signs of competitiveness and innovative thinking. His interest in computers began at Lakeside School when he was thirteen. There, he met Paul Allen, who became his future business partner. The duo explored machine potential, fostering a passion that shaped their future. In 1975, Gates dropped out of Harvard University.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, born May 14, 1984, is an American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. He co-founded and led Facebook as chairman and chief executive officer. Zuckerberg also co-founded the solar sail spacecraft project Breakthrough Starshot and serves on its board. Born in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University. He launched Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4, 2004, with roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

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

Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak was born August 11, 1950. He is an American inventor, electronics engineer, programmer, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc. This company later became the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the largest by market capitalization. Wozniak and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs are recognized as pioneers of the personal computer revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I, the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs began marketing it.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), was an English mathematician and writer. She focused on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer. Lovelace recognized the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. She published the first algorithm intended for such a machine. Lovelace is regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of a computing machine and one of the first computer programmers.

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

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (née Murray, December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She programmed one of the first Harvard Mark I computers and invented a linker. Hopper popularized machine-independent programming languages, leading to the development of COBOL, an early high-level language still used today. Before joining the Navy, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and taught mathematics at Vassar College.

Rob Zombie, born Robert Bartleh Cummings in 1965, is an iconic figure in entertainment. His career spans over four decades as a musician, filmmaker, and voice actor. Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, his early interest in horror films set the stage for his career. As a musician, Zombie became the founding member of White Zombie in the mid-1980s. His unique style combines heavy metal, punk rock, and industrial sounds.

Charles Simonyi (Hungarian: Simonyi Károly; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-born American software architect. He led Microsoft's applications group, building the first versions of the Microsoft Office suite. Simonyi founded and led Intentional Software, which Microsoft acquired in 2017. In April 2007, he traveled aboard Soyuz TMA-10 as the fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian in space. In March 2009, he made a second trip on Soyuz TMA-14.

Donald Ervin Knuth (kə-NOOTH; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He received the ACM Turing Award in 1974, which is informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. Knuth wrote the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. He developed rigorous analysis for computational complexity of algorithms. He systematized formal mathematical techniques for these methods. 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 developing BSD UNIX and authored the original vi text editor. Joy also wrote the 2000 essay Why The Future Doesn't Need Us, expressing concerns 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 and Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm. He sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen also co-founded Ning, a platform for social networking websites. He sits on the board of Facebook, eBay, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Cem Kaner J.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology. Since 2004, he has directed Florida Tech's Center for Software Testing Education & Research (CSTER). Kaner advocates for software usability and testing. Before his professorship, Kaner worked in the software industry starting in 1983 in Silicon Valley. In that role, he was a tester, programmer, tech writer, software development manager, product development director, and independent consultant. In 1988, he collaborated with 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 and served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar became a billionaire at age 31 with eBay's 1998 initial public offering (IPO). Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004 to expand efforts beyond non-profits into for-profits and public policy. Since 2010, Omidyar has been involved in online journalism as the head.

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 and authored PKZIP, a program for creating zip files under DOS. A copyright lawsuit between System Enhancement Associates (SEA) and PKWARE, Inc., was publicized in the BBS community during the late 1980s. Katz's software business succeeded, but he struggled with social isolation and chronic alcoholism in his later 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 programmer. He designed the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). The Ruby community uses his motto: "Matz is nice and so we are nice," abbreviated as MINASWAN. In 2011, Matsumoto became the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform in San Francisco. He is a fellow of the Rakuten Institute of Technology.

John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American programmer, developer, and engineer. He co-founded id Software. Carmack programmed video games including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Rage and their sequels. He developed innovations in 3D graphics, such as the 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 works as an independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. Appelbaum studies at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He was formerly a core member of the Tor project, which provides online anonymity. Appelbaum also represents WikiLeaks and has collaborated with artists like Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, and Ai Weiwei. His journalistic work appeared in Der Spiegel and els.

Kenneth Lane Thompson, born February 4, 1943, pioneered computer science. He spent most of his career at Bell Labs, where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. Thompson invented the B programming language, which preceded C. He also co-created the Plan 9 operating system. Since 2006, Thompson has worked at Google, co-inventing the Go programming language. His other work includes regular expressions and early computer text editors QED and ed, th.

Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He authored Joel on Software, a blog about software development, and created the project management software Trello. Spolsky served as a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team from 1991 to 1994. He founded Fog Creek Software in 2000 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 product.

Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott) was an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He used the alter egos "Lord British" in the Ultima game series and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, started as a game designer and programmer. Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut on October 12, 2008, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12.

Todd Rundgren is a rock maverick and cult figure. Born in Philadelphia, he absorbed various music styles, including the Beatles, Philadelphia soul, and Gilbert & Sullivan. These influences shaped his future work. He formed his first major band, Nazz, in 1967. The group gained insider praise but less commercial success. Nazz is best known for the double A-sided single, "Open My Eyes"/"Hello It's Me".

Daniel Kottke was a college friend of Steve Jobs and an early employee of Apple Inc.

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish-American software engineer. He created the Linux kernel, which powers various operating systems like Android and Chrome OS. Linus also developed Git, a distributed version control system, and Subsurface, software for scuba dive logging and planning. 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 and helped develop Unix alongside Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan co-authored the first book on the C programming language with Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan stated that he had no part in designing the C language. He wrote many Unix programs, including ditroff. Kernighan coauthored the AWK and AMPL programming languages.

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

Guido van Rossum (born January 31, 1956) is a Dutch programmer famous for creating the Python programming language. Van Rossum served as the "Benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL) until stepping down in July 2018. He remains a member of the Python Steering Council.

Marshall Kirk McKusick was born January 19, 1954. He is a computer scientist known for his work on BSD UNIX, from the 1980s through FreeBSD and the present day. McKusick served as president of the USENIX Association in 1990–1992 and again in 2002–2004; he still serves on the board. He is on the editorial board of ACM Queue Magazine. Colleagues know him as "Kirk". He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Cornell University. McKusick 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 programmer. He developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. In 1998, Allman and Greg Olson co-founded Sendmail, Inc.

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. He also developed Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. He currently works as the founder at 22Cans.

Richard W. "Ric" Weiland (April 21, 1953 – June 24, 2006) was a computer software pioneer, programmer, and philanthropist. He was the second employee at Microsoft Corporation, joining during his final year at Stanford University. At age 35, he left Microsoft to focus on investment management and philanthropy. He became a well-respected donor to the LGBTQ social justice movement, the environment, health and human services, and education. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that Ric's bequest was the 11th largest charitable gift in the nation, exceeding $165.

Timothy John Schafer was born July 26, 1967. He is an American computer game designer. Schafer founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, following over ten years at LucasArts. He designed critically acclaimed games including 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. Schafer is recognized in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style.

Virgil Griffith (born 1983), also known as Romanpoet, is an American programmer who created WikiScanner. He published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory. Griffith stated that his mission in developing WikiScanner was "to create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike."

James Clark (February 23, 1964) wrote groff and expat. He worked extensively with open-source software and XML. Born in London, Clark attended Charterhouse and Merton College, Oxford. He has lived in Bangkok, Thailand since 1995, and remains a permanent resident. Clark owns the Thai Open Source Software Center, which provides a legal framework for his open-source activities. For the GNU project, he wrote groff and an XML editing mode for GNU Emacs.

Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – July 6, 1985) was a publisher, photographer, programmer, and attorney. He pioneered the shareware business model for software marketing. Fluegelman also edited PC World and Macworld. He led the 1970s New Games movement, which advocated for noncompetitive games.

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

Philip Gale was an American computer prodigy and Internet software developer. He was a sophomore student at MIT. While at MIT, he wrote Total Access. EarthLink hired him at age 16 to develop the company. Today, EarthLink has over one million users. By age 17, Gale earned roughly a million dollars in stock options from Earthlink for his ISP programs. In 1995, Gale's father died of a heart attack. Friends reported that Gale struggled with the loss. He returned to MIT.

Ahn Cheol-soo (Korean: 안철수; born February 26, 1962) is a South Korean politician, medical doctor, businessperson, and software entrepreneur. Ahn was a two-time presidential election candidate in 2012 and 2017. He currently seeks the Seoul mayorship for the Bareunmirae Party. In 2012, he ran as an independent candidate for president but withdrew a month before the election to support Moon Jae-in. He was the People's Party nominee in 2017. Ahn co-led and led the People's Party until his party and Bare

Earl Levine developed streaming media and audio watermarking technologies during the late 1990s dot-com bubble. He worked at VXtreme until Microsoft acquired it. Afterward, he worked for Liquid Audio. Microsoft acquired Liquid Audio's patent portfolio in 2002. Since leaving Liquid Audio, Levine has worked with many Silicon Valley start-up companies. He graduated from Richardson High School with Carla Overbeck.

O. Arthur Stiennon, Jr. (November 9, 1919 in Green Bay, Wisconsin – January 10, 2003 in Madison, Wisconsin) was a clinical radiologist and inventor. He developed radiation treatment methods and worked as a software and real estate developer in Madison, Wisconsin. Stiennon attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. He earned 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. After serving in the United States Army from 1944 to 1947, he served 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 also the Director of Creative Development for Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame for his contributions to the video game industry.

Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often known by his initials rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. Stallman campaigns for users to have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify software. Software that ensures these freedoms is called free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project and founded the Free Software Foundation. He developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License.

Ulf Michael Widenius (often called Monty; born March 3, 1962, in Helsinki, Finland) authored 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. Additionally, he is a founder and general partner at the venture capital firm OpenOcean.

Ron Gilbert is an American video-game designer, programmer, and producer. His games focus on interactive storytelling. He is best known for his work on classic LucasArts adventure games like Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. As a student in 1983, he co-wrote Graphics Basic and worked on action games for HESware, which later went out of business. Gilbert joined Lucasfilm Games (LucasArts) afterward to develop his own games. He invented SCUMM, a technology used in many systems.

Rasmus Lerdorf was born on November 22, 1968, in Denmark. He is a Danish-Canadian programmer who co-authored and inspired the PHP scripting language. Lerdorf wrote the first two versions of the language and helped develop later versions with developers including Jim Winstead (who created blo.gs), Stig Bakken, Shane Caraveo, Andi Gutmans, and Zeev Suraski. He continues to contribute to the project.

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