Well, you know… little girls & boys admire athletes, singers, actors… We, OS geeks, tend to respect and admire engineers (for the most part). Come in and vote for your favorite tech icon, let us see who is the “big tech star” these days!A sad part of this poll is that there are many engineers working on marvelous stuff (e.g. ex-Be engineers, Solaris, HP-UX, SGI engineers, Microsoft and Apple “anonymous” engineers etc etc) but by not working on an open environment, like the open source scene, it makes it very difficult to identify these individuals. I am sure that there are some extremely intelligent people working on many sectors in the tech industry, but by being part of big corporations they don’t build “a name” for themeselves, so we can’t include them on the poll, as most voters won’t ‘know’ them.
Other developers in the open source scene are well-known, but we can’t be possibly include all these people in the poll, so we selected a few of them based on their popularity in the general OS scene. Additionally, I tried to include “active” engineers/architects still working on platform/OS stuff, not historical figures like Wozniak or RMS.
Note 1: The poll is now closed, thank you for voting.
This poll is missing John Carmack, who continues to make great contributions to todays computer tech. My vote would go to him, but now I picked Miguel de Icaza, because he is a guy who seems to have the clearest vision of a (non-Mac) UNIX desktop. He is a good programmer and an all-around bright guy.
Theo deRaadt is one who’s not afraid to speak his mind *and* one with a clarity of vision unsurpassed by most of the other choices. Thus he gets *my* vote.
“My favorite tech icon is the United States. That country owns the IT industry.”
Really? Your bosses seem to be moving everything to India so one must assume that its Bangalore that rulz… 🙂
Don Knuth is one of my heroes 🙂
But Dave Small is another, yet far less known. He used to write articles for atari magazines some years ago, and it was a fantastic writer, along with a fantastic hacker (in the right sense of the world).
For example, he’s the main one behind the excellent Spectre GCR emulator. mind you, it was a great piece of hacking : a macintosh emulator for atari ST, which was able to run faster than the mac, with a bigger screen resolution (using the atari res), and that costs far less (atari+spectre) than the mac itself…
For Tesla … well, just read the article about Tesla written by Dave Small 😉 : http://www.skepticfiles.org/crank/tesla0.htm
This article was titled : ” THE GREATEST HACKER OF ALL TIME” 🙂
/me too
But if you don´t accept historical figure, then my vote goes to Larry Wall. It´s a always pleasure to read his books, interviews and articles.
Where’s good ol’ Bill? He isn’t here?
Okay, Spock it’ll be then!
Any one who can stare at a screen of wiggly lines and random dots on a screen coupled with beeps here and there.Then using that information calculate the trajectory the enterprise has to take around the sun to travel back in time has got my vote anyday! Linus bah! he is small time!
Wow, I thought I’d be the first to mention Niklaus Wirth.
Larry Wall: For giving me a renewed boost for thinking cleverly and coding in the last few years. He showed me through Perl the inside of some people’s brain!
Bill Gates: Even though people do not like him today, I must say that because of him and his ‘Basic’ of yesteryear, I was able to learn programming on my TRS-80 and discovered that THE THING to do wad computer programming. I still think that way, even 20 years later.
Linus Torvald: For giving the people the “missing link” to the GNU project 10 years ago. I must say that his experiment now benefits the whole world. We are now in the Matrix!
RMS: For being the man he his. For out-hacking all those top brains in 1970 all by himself. For being the last of the True Hackers. For inspiring me when I don’t know how to solve a particular problem.
One of those giants we owe so much.
I feel the same Bill had the idea of a computer in every American household. Linux would have a hard time of it if DOS and windows never existed(no cheap PC hardware).
Bill Gates is the single most influential person in IT ever. Quit denying it people…
“little girls & boys admire athletes, singers, actors… We, OS geeks, tend to respect and admire engineers ”
Hmm, I don’t recall ever admiring anyone, I might have thought he or she is good at this or that but then we’re all good or at least have the potential to be good at something aren’t we. Maybe I’m just weird.
Who’s that? My vote goes to Lenny Dykstra!!! 🙂
Would be of immense help if the posts came with the counter on it so that we could walk through them easily.
I think it will be easy to do.
ps. Of course, people need to insert it on header or in the message body if needed.
But, putting Bill in a poll like this wouldn’t be politically correct.
Yes, Joe, Nikola Tesla is probably one of the most important engineers of the century, but he is dead, unfortunately.
It’s too bad he had to have all his funding taken away during the prime of his research.
Honestly, I think the man had one foot in the genius pool and one foot in the flat out mad pool, but that’s just me. As they say, it’s is a fine line between the two.
Steve Wozniak!
http://www.woz.org/
Old school Niklaus Wirth, “newer” school Bill Joy.
Theo Theo Theo!
Linus is teh uber kool!!!
He gets my vote
The creator of doom and quake
Yes, I know this won´t be very popular, but for me, Bill Gates. He built a company out of nothing, he made billions and made other make millions. And he is the mind behind Windows and MS-DOS. Icaza, Torvald and others are great guys, but Gates made a great product and made it very succesful. He made computing affordable to everyone.
I agree, for the most part. There was some real shady stuff along the way, but computing wouldn’t be where it is today without Mr. Gates and his company. If it wasn’t for my hatred for Microsoft in the past 5-6 years he’d be topping my list.
No he didn’t, He just got all the glory. Microsoft would have been nothing without qdos, and Paul Allen which means you can not state that Bill Gates built Microsoft.
As for computing today, you can thank IBM, Compaq, Commodore, and Apple for computing today. Microsoft was just in the right place at the right time.
Ok, granted. Paul Allen and Gates both built Microsoft. But Allen left the company, and Gates stayed, and he is still making Microsoft bigger and better. So, my vote still goes for Gates
As for qdos, I don´t know about that. But, where is qdos now?
No he didn’t, He just got all the glory. Microsoft would have been nothing without qdos, and Paul Allen which means you can not state that Bill Gates built Microsoft.
Oh, come now, Microsoft was already a large enough company from their sales of BASIC for the ALTAIR that IBM approached *them* and asked them to develop an operating system for their upcoming personal computer. Yes, they purchased a CP/M clone that had been written for the Intel processor that IBM selected, but had that not been available they would have simply selected a different operating system or written one in house. There was nothing revolutionary or technically interesting at all about QDOS.
you the man!
I voted for Miguel De Icaza, but Theo deRaadt was a close call, ..and we are missing Andrew Morton who would have had my first vote and possably Hans Reiser just for fun.
Bill Gates? heh.. ok dude. http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/10
“”if it wasnt for these two, the world of personal computing wouldn’t even exist… everyone knows and love woz… ”
eh, you made a classic mistake with this one. Saying something wouldn’t exist without someone is basicly never right, because someone else would have done it, in this case there were probably thousands of people with the same idea, only a matter of time till someone did it. Something like a discovery in physic’s or the like is probably one of the few places where such a statement might work, but even then someone would figure it out.
That being said, woz is a cool guy, and hats off to him, but I think eugenia made it clear why he’s not on the list.”
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Regardless if the technology could exist without them, they DID invent it first and it is their implementations and their actions that set off the industry which we are discussing today. By this I mean that because of this event in history and their actions in history (setting off ibm, ibm vs apple wars resulting in pc dominance, ibm choosing intel to combat apple, ms & ibm battling apple together, ms licensing apple os, ms creating windows, etc) have resulted in the computing world we are in today. It is guaranteed that the landscape of computing today would look a lot different without jobs & woz (both were equally important)…
The same can be said of linus for free software (especially his importance for gpl <even more so than RMS b/c gpl was not really that popular unitl linux AFAIK; correct me i am wrong…>) but probably not of my personal favorite tech icon john hubbard… while i admire him, i just cannot conceive how he is as instrumental to computing today as woz and jobs… important to unix, freebsd, & linux – yes… important to the computing as the whole industry – no…
someone mentioned gates as important… and this is true too… no matter what he did, he is also very much responsible for the computing landscape looking like how it is today… but just b/c he is important doesn’t mean i gotta like him ;-)…
Typo: I meant JORDAN Hubbard not JOHN Hubbard… damn… wish there was a way to edit posts…
Larry Wall, and not for his work on PERL but for writing patch! I mean c’mon people, where would we be without patch? Still hand-applying diffs, that’s where! It’s become such an indispensible utility for collaboration by allowing us to pass diffs around that we hardly ever think about it anymore, but we have Larry to thank for it and the fact that he still codes should have made him more than eligible for this poll. Oh well, as Eugenia says, there are a lot of deserving people missing from this list. 🙁
Linus started off with recompiling Tannenbaums Minix for the x86. Yes correct no own kernel devolopment. Than he ripped more and more Unix code and included that into what today is known as Linuks. But really it is nothing else ripped code and recompiled into Linuks. What went wrong with folks voting for such an IP thief ?
And Tim O’Reilly. Well I didn’t make my choice because it’s one of these 3!
Spock baby
How can you have a poll like this and not have Wozniak listed? http://www.woz.org
<<<Regardless if the technology could exist without them, they DID invent it first…>>>
I am not sure exactly what Jobs, Woz, Gates or Linus “invented.”
<<<…and it is their implementations and their actions that set off the industry which we are discussing today.>>>
Certainly. They were implementors and developers, rather than inventors.
<<<It is guaranteed that the landscape of computing today would look a lot different without jobs & woz (both wereequally important)…>>>
I am not sure about this point, in regards to how computers interface and work. The main thing that these two “invented” was the trash can (a temporary holding directory for deleted files) in 1983, which probably would have happened own its own. (Incidentally, I do not use one with my Golem/Debian setup). When Apple’s Lisa was released, the GUI was already 10 years old with offerings by several companies. It is not clear whether Apple or Visi Corp. invented drop-down menus in 1983, but this innovation probably would have appeared on its own soon after… how else would one arrange multiple features in an uncluttered, organized fashion. Apple probably invented the Finder, but the more useful and informative task-bar/dock seemed to have first appeared in an early version of Windows.
I am not sure exactly what Jobs, Woz, Gates or Linus “invented.”
Woz invented something called the “Apple I”
My vote goes entirely to Alan Kay. His ability, vision and leadership has endured 30 years. Who is he? Co-inventor of the GUI, coiner of the term object-oriented, and the grandfather of the personal computer. He saw how humans could interact with computers long before there were any which could fit on a desk.
And today, he is still active, leading Squeak deeper into the future of computing. A personal hero of mine, and one that does not get much attention compared to a lot of others. For most of us, Alan’s work has had a bigger impect on our lives than anyone else on that list- and hopefully will continue to!
”
Linus started off with recompiling Tannenbaums Minix for the x86. Yes correct no own kernel devolopment. Than he ripped more and more Unix code and included that into what today is known as Linuks. But really it is nothing else ripped code and recompiled into Linuks. What went wrong with folks voting for such an IP thief ?”
Actually if you were trying to be serious and not trolling…you are wrong, very wrong. Minix was a microkernel. Tannenbaum and Linus’s argument over the architecture design is still posted on the web.
With regards to Unix, or SCO in general, Linux gave more to SCO than SCO gave to Linux. If anyone is an IP theif, it is SCO, or maybe even Bill Gates. He seems to rip a lot of code off too.
“With regards to Unix, or SCO in general, Linux gave more to SCO than SCO gave to Linux. If anyone is an IP theif, it is SCO, or maybe even Bill Gates. He seems to rip a lot of code off too.”
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no way can sco steal linux code without gpling their own software so high doubt that… bill gates maybe an ip thief but again, definitely not from linux…
almost every major os out there today does “steal” from one major group — the bsds…
in fact it is suggested and believed the sco code & linux that were found to be matching line for line is actually really old bsd code… so no, linux didnt steal sco code and sco didnt steal linux code… they stole from the bsds… but thats ok cause thats what the bsd code is there for and thats why the bsd license is there for… bsd just doesnt give a damn who takes what and crams it where…
I love reading these things. If you read the first set of posts and then skip to the very last set of posts to see what the discussion degenerates into, it’s just hilarious.
I vote for who ever posted this article in the first place.
The ability to generate 140+ posts on what essentially amounts to “Name tour favorite color or flavour of ice-cream” wins the geek test hands down. Microsofts endless security updates don’t even get that much attention….
I seriously do not get why the list is full of these Linux people. They have done very little. Even Linus himslef has done nothing but develop his own version of Unix, which most say is not even as good as other, just as free, alternatives.
Now, Linus did help push along the GPL and such, but that is hardly all that much of an accomplishment, I would say.
Someone like Cutler has the leader for teams who built MANY first-class operating systems, including NT, which is the most used PC OSs in the world today, not to mention it was, and still is, a great undertaking.
I’m sorry, but there are many other people who would be much better suited on that list than the ones on there.
With regards to Unix, or SCO in general, Linux gave more to SCO than SCO gave to Linux. If anyone is an IP theif, it is SCO, or maybe even Bill Gates. He seems to rip a lot of code off too.
I heard a rumor the NT was based or at least partly inspired by VMS any truth to this?
Hey, where’s George Chen (also known as the ‘Internet Guy’)?
For those of you who don’t know/remember George, you can see an article about him here: http://www.clementmok.com/musings/detail.asp?ItemID=4
He may be slightly windows centric… I think he is great.