Famous Software Developers

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

William Henry Gates III, Bill Gates, was born October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. His upper-middle-class family stressed education. Gates was an outstanding student, showing early competitiveness and innovative thought. 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 passion that shaped their future. Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975.

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin, born August 21, 1973, is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page. He leads Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. As of June 2019, Brin ranked thirteenth richest globally, with a net worth of US$50.1 billion. Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at age 6. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, following his father and grandfather's path by studying

Lawrence Joseph Ellison, born August 17, 1944, is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Ellison co-founded and serves as Oracle Corporation's executive chairman and CTO. March 2019 saw Forbes list him the fourth wealthiest person in the United States and the seventh wealthiest globally, with a fortune of $66.1 billion, up from $54.5 billion in 2018.

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

Lawrence Edward Page, born March 26, 1973, is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He co-founded Google with Sergey Brin. Page serves as the chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Page stepped aside as Google CEO in August 2001, favoring Eric Schmidt. He took the role back in April 2011. In July 2015, he announced he would step aside again to become Alphabet's CEO, reorganizing Google's assets. Under Page, Alphabet seeks major advancements across many industries. As of June 2019, Page is the

Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer. He shares the title of "father of the Internet" with TCP/IP co-inventor Bob Kahn. He earned many honors: the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Marconi Prize, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish-American software engineer. He created the Linux kernel, the core for Linux operating systems and others like Android and Chrome OS. Torvalds also built Git, the distributed version control system, and Subsurface, dive logging software. He received the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize from the Technology Academy Finland, alongside Shinya Yamanaka.

Kevin Systrom, an American entrepreneur and software engineer, co-founded and led Instagram. Instagram is an online mobile photo, video sharing service for iPhone and Android. Users apply filters to photos and share them on the service or other networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. In 2013, Forbes listed Systrom in the 30 under 30 list for the Social/Mobile category. Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram in San Francisco on October 6, 2010. Instagram is one of the fastest growing services.

Alexander Alexandrovich Stepanov (born November 16, 1950 in Moscow) is a Russian computer programmer. He championed generic programming. Stepanov designed and implemented the C++ Standard Template Library. He started this work around 1992 while at HP Labs. He previously worked at Bell Labs near Andrew Koenig, attempting to get Bjarne Stroustrup to add Ada generics to C++. He introduced the notion of concept. He authored Elements of Progr (with Paul McJones).

Michel "Mike" Krieger, a Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer, co-founded Instagram with Kevin Systrom. Krieger moved to California in 2004 for Stanford University. There, Krieger studied symbolic systems and met Kevin Systrom. The two co-founded Instagram in 2010. Krieger made Instagram updates for the first three years it was public.

Evan Thomas Spiegel, born June 4, 1990, is an American businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., which he created as Snapchat Inc. with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown while they studied at Stanford University. Spiegel became the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015.

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

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; December 10, 1815 – November 27, 1852), was an English mathematician and writer. She worked on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer. Lovelace first saw the machine's use beyond pure calculation. She published the first algorithm meant for such a machine. Lovelace is sometimes seen as the first to grasp the full potential of a "computing machine" and one of the first computer programmers.

Hans Thomas Reiser, born December 19, 1963, is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer. In April 2008, Reiser was convicted of first-degree murder for his wife, Nina Reiser, who disappeared in September 2006. He later pleaded guilty to a reduced second-degree murder charge. This was part of a settlement that required him to reveal his wife's body location, which he said was in a shallow grave near their home. Before his imprisonment, Reiser created the ReiserFS computer file system, which is part of the Linux kernel.

Robert "Rob" C. Pike, born 1956, is a Canadian programmer and author. He gained fame for his work on the Go programming language at Bell Labs. There, he joined the Unix team. Pike helped create Plan 9 and the Inferno operating systems from Bell Labs. He also developed the Limbo programming language. Pike co-developed the Blit graphical terminal for Unix. Earlier, he wrote the first Unix window system in 1981. Pike remains the sole inventor named in AT&T's US patent 4,555,775, the "backing store patent," which is part of the X graphic system protocol and one of the first.

Eric Steven Raymond, born December 4, 1957, is an American software developer. He wrote the widely cited 1997 essay and the 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, among other works. Raymond is an open-source software advocate. He wrote a guidebook for the NetHack Roguelike game. During the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, now published as The New Hacker's Dictionary.

David Nelson, born May 25, 1993, is an American software developer. He serves as the CEO of Motion AI, an Artificial Intelligence software company.

Steve Capps, an American computer programmer, designed the original Apple Macintosh computer. Capps began at Xerox Corporation while studying computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1981, Capps started at Apple on the Lisa project. He continued work on the Macintosh, writing the Finder (with Bruce Horn) and Macintosh system utilities like ResEdit. During a 1986 break, he wrote three music programs: Jam Session, SoundEdit, and Super Studio Session. SoundEdit eventually sold to

Jack Patrick Dorsey, born November 19, 1976, is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He co-founded and is CEO of Twitter. Dorsey also founded and leads Square, a mobile payments company.

Blake Aaron Ross, born June 12, 1985, is an American software engineer. He co-created the Mozilla Firefox internet browser with Dave Hyatt. In 2005, he received a nomination for Wired magazine's top Rave Award, Renegade of the Year, alongside Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jon Stewart. Rolling Stone magazine's 2005 hot list included him. From 2007, Ross worked for Facebook as Director of Product until resigning in early 2013. In 2015, he wrote a fan fiction original screenplay for the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley, which drew attention.

Ulrich Drepper led the contribution and maintenance of the GNU C Library.

Veda Hlubinka-Cook, born Robert Cook, co-founded Metaweb. She programmed at Brøderbund in the 1980s and served as the model for a character in Jordan Mechner's game Prince of Persia. She designed and created the computer game D/Generation and acted as technical director for The Last Express. She came out as transgender in 2017.

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. Andreessen co-founded and served as general partner for Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He founded Opsware, a software company, and later sold it to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen also co-founded Ning, a platform for social networking websites. Andreessen sits on the boards of directors for Facebook, eBay, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Shane Robert McFee runs Kazrog LLC, a software company focusing on pro audio and gaming. Shane McFee also works as a musician and audio engineer.

Shawn Fanning, born November 22, 1980 in Brockton, Massachusetts, is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. Fanning developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing platforms in 1999. Napster gained wide popularity, and Time magazine featured Fanning on its cover. The site's initial free P2P version shut down in 2001 after the company failed to appeal court orders regarding the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version launched, and it was bought by

Thomas Anderson, born November 8, 1970, co-founded the social networking site Myspace in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe. Anderson served as Myspace president and strategic adviser until his departure in 2009. People called him "Tom from Myspace" because until 2010, new Myspace users automatically got him as their first "friend".

.NET Developer, web junkie, infoholic, Win2Mac convert.

Miguel de Icaza, born November 23, 1972, is a Mexican-American programmer. He is best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin projects.

Scott Ganyo became an award-winning producer and writer, starring in several feature films, and appears on TV. Scott founded Imp Films in 2008. He entered entertainment after building his career as an Internet software entrepreneur and consultant. People call him "charming" and "funny". Gotham's villains might mistake him for a "dark knight" because he wears the tights of a black belt studying Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee.

Adam Schwem composes music.

I am an interesting person living in South Australia.

William Schmidt is an American television writer and producer. He won a Christopher Award for the television film Evil in Clear River in 1988. He received a nomination for a Humanitas Prize for Darrow in 1992. Some credit him as Bill Schmidt.

I am a software developer. I work on this website.

Armands Strazds is a Latvian composer, software developer, education researcher, and political activist. He studied composition with Gederts Ramans at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and with Friedhelm Döhl at the Lübeck Academy of Music. There, he also studied computer music with Dirk Reith. Armands Strazds conducted PhD studies with Atis Kapenieks at Riga Technical University, focusing on new learning technologies. He and Kapenieks published several papers in this area. Armands Strazds developed the algorithmic composition systems Digital Winds, Hymnica, and Suranadira.