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!
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My vote goes,hands down, to EW Dijkstra. (!)
IMO perfectionism is a great quality that every programmer should have. 
I don't care for whom he works, the man is the best.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/news/fromms/...
Cutler co-created VMS and NT. He is the man, but hey, I didn't vote for him. I voted for a more handsome one. ;D
Carsten Haitzler. Raster: an artful programmer.
Data is good, Data is good... but Spock is much sexier. 
>Actually I'd vote for JBQ
He didn't wanna be in the poll.
Indeed. But he is no system engineer, he is a good game/3D coder.
More for what they did in the '70s, although they're both still active.
Microsoft reminds me of an observation some musician (Frank Zappa?) once made about LA studio music - they take a dizzying variety of incredibly cool ingredients from all over the world, put it in the hands of the most experienced talent - and the result always seems to be homogeneous pap.
I'm sad to report that I dont know who most of these people are. I guess I lose some major geek points!
Matthew Dillon has my vote.
Hmm, I forgot about Matthew. I would include him in the poll normally. :o
Well Matt Dillon is good looking, although probably more so in Drugstore Cowboy than in There's Something about Mary...
I would have loved to see Carl Sassenrath as a choice.
RMS does not code anymore. I tried to include current engineers, not ex-engineers.
One is RMS, but of course, he's not on there. I really do respect Richard Stallman, probably more than Linus Torvalds.
But I voted for Miguel De Icaza. I really enjoy his writings, and his projects are always wonderful. Linux would be a much sadder place without him.
What about Billy Joy. He wrote VI, most of the BSD network stack, was fundamental in bringing Java as well as working on Slowaris.
Jonathan Ive of Apple. Not a developer but the "most influential designer" according to the NY Times.
They don't code [anymore] or they are not actively working as architects. Come on, read my above comment.
Oh yes 
Personally i don't like to have a "Favorite Tech Icon". There are so many cool people in this world, and only the famous get the acknowledgements. Another reason is, nobody is Perfect. That includes you, Theo!
However, there are people i hugely admire.
Rasterman
Pixelhead both great artists
DJB who has written, among other quality software, the for me most easiest MTA i ever mett
Stanley Kubrick (does that count?)
The people of Icculus.org
and finally i'm wondering where RMS is on the list.
Next time you make a poll like this, leave it Open instead of a list. There are so many possibilities people can have, and by this, only the famous people get more famous, while others deserve it, too. It also makes it more biased...
DJB who has written, among other quality software, the for me most easiest MTA i ever mett
I agree, I like DJB too.. Matthew Dillon and DJB have my vote.. ;-)
Not that I like Sun all that much, but Bill Joy is definitely my computing hero. With all he've done, at Berkley...
(Down with EMACS! Long live VI!)
I use Linux at home but one thing I can't put up with is
Linus's constant struggle to remain the sole controlling
entity behind the development of the kernel. Either way,
kudos to him for starting the project.
I always had the notion that Ward Christensen, author of the xmodem / modem7 protocol, opened up a great world to me (and a lot of other people). I have great respect for the work of a number of other people, but Ward Christensen is my one hero.
I was surprised he was not listed.
he is like the Einstein or Neils Bore (or is it Bhor?) of Computer science!!
If you mean Edsger Dijkstra, you wrote ''is''. He has passed away about a year ago...
http://www.utexas.edu/admin/opa/news/02newsreleases/nr_200208/nr_di...
http://www.cwi.nl/pr/press-releases/2002/Dijkstra-obituary.html
One of the great shapers of Unix. He was creator of vi, csh, BSD, cofounder of Sun, and one of the many great minds behind Java and one of its most vocal advocates. It would have been nice to have seen him on the list.
Lacking an option for him, I voted for Jordan Hubbard, one of the wisest and most sagely developers/project leads there's ever been.
RMS hands down... but he's not in list then Alan Cox!
bye
I didn't vote for anyone. I guess I must be too old (36) for these antics (icons, stars, autographs, etc.).
yes of course I meant him..who else?
personally, I don't care if he is dead, he is still a tech icon, as is Woz, and MS's cofounder...the dude who now owns charter cable and stuff....arg...say his name and I will know who he is, and other geeks who care about him will recall his name. ( I put him above Gates because he was the guy who did all the damn work)
Just tried to set something straight. No offense meant
"the dude who now owns charter cable and stuff....arg...say his name and I will know who he is"
Paul Allen?
i voted for david cutler. he is revolutionary mind behind windows nt/2000/xp. he was one of the creators of vms, and brought great vms knowledge to creation of windows nt, which is really microkernel operating system. because of this windows nt/2000/xp are some of the best design operating system available today. looks like no one cares about that though, and everyone is voting for ratty college student linus torvalds who designed linux as his first operating system in a college basement. well just look at windows nt/2000/xp popularity versus linux, and i think u will see who did the better os design job.
He and a TEAM worked at the NT kernel, not only he did.
"well just look at windows nt/2000/xp popularity versus linux, and i think u will see who did the better os design job."
Argumentum ad populum (a fallacy)
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#populum
Just because Zeta (for example) is unpopular (on which is this concluded anyways? Have you seen yesterday's poll), it doesn't make it a less better design than [insert name of OS here]
"looks like no one cares about that though, and everyone is voting for ratty college student linus torvalds who designed linux as his first operating system in a college basement."
(not everybody is voting on Linus Torvalds. For example, you don't)
Which according to you leads to [...]?
while I will admit this fellows greatness, OS design has nothing to do with its popularity.
either you are a troll or you are really that naive
which do you prefer?
i went for Miguel De Icaza, but only after almost going dave cutler. After seeing the results i think i wish i went for dave since he is very under representing. His baby has gone farther then the others. But the pole seamed to be largly of the opensource world, so I went Miguel. He's one of the few with his head on right. He gives me hope for the opensource world. Linus isn't to bad either, it's just unfortent that those who are all about him are nuts and tend to ruin his image. Also in the end his project hasn't done that much to effect the computing world, even if you don't want to belive it, oh well. Linux has made much of a dent on things.
I didn't see the Matthias Ettrich option until after voting for Dominic. Crap.
Here's a write-in vote for the OpenBeOS guy.
My all time CS hero, will be recognized years from now. FP's, PCC, you name it.
>Here's a write-in vote for the OpenBeOS guy.
Dominic is not an OpenBeOS guy. He is an ex-SGI, ex-Be, ex-QNX and current Apple guy.
BitTorrent is the most revolutionary network application of our age, and the first real mainstream Python application, much like LimeWire was the first real mainstream Java application. It has transformed the face of file sharing on the Internet, something which hasn't happened since Napster. With peer-to-peer networks springing up left and right, the technology was beginning to feel quite stale, until one lone Python programmer revolutionized the world. It's sad not to see an option for him. Let's hope the future brings many more such Python applications, that we may cast off crufty C network daemons and replace them with secure Python counterparts!
No Dennis Richie? the father of UNIX and creator of all things good ;-)
If from a CEO point of view, I would say Larry Ellison. He is rich and quite happy to show. Heck, if I was as rich as he, I would be willing to gloat a little.
Not very fashionable and certainly not within the rules, but John Von Neumann.
I voted for Matthias...can't let him be forgotten...
I voted for Dave Cutler too, but don't underestimate Linus Torvalds, he did what others still can't do (RMS and the Hurd).
No Dennis Richie? the father of UNIX and creator of all things good ;-)
Dennis Ritchie is the creator of C, not Unix. The original UNICS kernel was written by Ken Thompson in PDP-7 assembly in 1969.
windows nt, which is really microkernel operating system.
>>>>>>
Windows NT was never a microkernel OS. It was microkernel-ish, but stuff like the VM and filesystem were in the kernel from the very beginning. Modern versions of NT (> 3.5) are definately *not* microkernels.
because of this windows nt/2000/xp are some of the best design operating system available today.
>>>>>>
That's a good one. NT 3.5 was an excellently architectured OS, but Microsoft threw all that away as it moved to NT 4.0, then 2000, then XP. NT's core algorithms were never world-class compared to Solaris, AIX, Irix, or now, Linux and FreeBSD.
Too many people to choose!
I think John Carmack should get some props. Yes he is a game
programmer, but probably one of the best ones!
Dan Berstein should be on that poll too.
Same goes for Donald Knuth!
See!!! Too many computer geek heroes :-)
Not to rain on your parade, but BitTorrent is a poorly designed resource hog. I've been working on a C-implemented BitTorrent replacement protocol called PDTP. You can read about it at http://pdtp.org/
And by the way, the creator of BitTorrent is named Bram Cohen, not "Braham"
perl & patch and TeX.
I'm not sure if Larry still writes code. Knuth doesn't, but is not fair not to mention him.
Well, I'd have voted for RMS, but he's not on the list.
So I went with the masses and voted Linus.
I think John Carmack should get some props. Yes he is a game
programmer, but probably one of the best ones!
Dan Berstein should be on that poll too.
Same goes for Donald Knuth!
Those are all great programmers, especially Knuth. I'm sure many frequent OSnews readers own all three volumes of the Art of Programming.
Unfortunately I think if you listed all the influential people in computer programming today the poll would have hundreds of options.
hrrmm i dont think i could have a number one, but havok (who i think is a visionary), andrew morton and linus all have minds that inspire me. other people who i admire include dirk and george and co (basicly the entire 'inner loop') from the kde team.
>"NT's core algorithms were never world-class compared to Solaris, AIX, Irix, or now, Linux and FreeBSD."
IBM might disagree with you:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-rt9/?t=gr,lnx...
With all the discussion about the "OpenBeOS guy", I would certainly give a large amount of kudos to Axel Dorfler, who seems to be singlehandedly developing huge portions of OpenBeOS. Hats off to him.
Since neither Dave Haynie or Joseph Palmer were on the poll (hardware guys), my vote want to Dominic Giampaolo (a software guy). Too bad a poll like this is really impossible to do.
let it be noted how important his work really is.
Bittorrent is one of the few projects i have donated money to. (i wish i could donate to more, but im a poor student, and at the time i had a spare $2 NZD)
Dominic. He does the work of 8 programmers. He's irreverant, antisocial, godlike, yet humble. Many sit on their accolades. He doesn't. He keeps working. He never expected the credit.
Not like all of these others named. People talk about linus like he was a prodigy. He wasn't. Dominic was. Linus, he's just shrewd. Jobs? I'm sorry, but apple lost their magic when JLG left(who could both program and build scratch archetecture, plus run a business). Oh, and jbq is good. I won't take that from him. He's DAMN good. Most of those working on obos, and most of those who worked at be were doing unbelievable things. You say the magic is gone in all those people. These fellas are young, and they just got started.
Eugenia- BeOS had a little of your husband in it. Impossible to seperate the man from his creation. Just something I stole freely from the 1923 movie, "Metropolis".
So, your loyalty being unwavering, is expected.
i guess i would have voted for Ken Thompson like someone else mentioned... He could easily trump all of these characters as the most influential person on modern operating systems b/c he is the father of unix itself (but then again it was dennis ritchie who invented c, among which lie the derivites of some of the most popular computer languages in the world, and recoded unix for c)...
but i guess he is not a modern programmer so i my vote went to john hubbard, the ultimate sage... i guess i coulda just as easily voted for theo, but, meh, it was a tossup b/c they both are just so great and so cool...
on a side note, i have a little bit to say about linus:
contrary to the overhype of linux (yes, it WAS drastically overhyped... maybe not any longer b/c of corporate help... <this from a freebsd guy!>), linus deserves a lot of credit for continuing the grassroots academia unix movement when it berkeley and att were fighting there heads off (damn u thieving at&t!!!)... anyways, it was because of his project and alternative to "controversial" code that free unix survived, even if it meant dwarfing the bsds...
no matter how many issues i have with gpl, no matter how many issues i have with the kernel and fraction of the community, no matter how many linux evangelists and zealots i find, no mater how much i personally prefer something else, credit must be given b/c linus did save free unix for academia for awhile... (AFAIK, commercial business didnt really give a damn about linux before around 97 when the hype machine really kicked in and the bsds had already been cleared of wrongdoing from at&t... so where did linux survive so fast and well between 93-97??? the academia)
linus seems pretty straightheaded and open to ideas (even drm!!! crazy or what??? he doesnt care what people do with the kernel when he publishes it)... he deserves the credit he gets considering that the work of one man eventually gained so much momemntum that some of the world's best companies are using his products
still, **MY** choice is john hubbard... i just admire his style and wisdom... he just has personality about him that just makes him my favorite tech "icon"... Theo and Linus therefore are tied for second... <u can really see my bsdism getting in the way here... to each his own i guess>
My vote would have been for Andrew Morton, but since he isn't there I voted Linus.
if axeld was up there, wait.. ken tompson?
axel dörfer. one man programming army. Trump?
Ya'll playing chump suits, really dudes.
Theo and Linus therefore are tied for second
While I agree with everything else you've said... I would vote Linus Torvalds over Theo de Raadt any day. Linus is a gentleman, but Theo is an immature asshole. As you seem knowledgable about Jordan Hubbard, you can understand the childishness of this exchage:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/1996/10/20/0004.html
Quote Theo de Raadt: "the anon mailer is coming up. in 10 minutes you're in trouble. you guys persist in getting the last word of flaming at me, and it isn't going to work."
Yes, that's Theo de Raadt having a temper tantrum and mailbombing FreeBSD's mailing list following an exchange with Jordan Hubbard.
to get a little more side tracked, i realized that even after that long post, i forgot to mention to more heroes of mine that aren't really coding anymore but had and still have such a powerful influence on tech industry...
steve jobs and steve wozniak...
if it wasnt for these two, the world of personal computing wouldn't even exist... everyone knows and love woz... the guy INVENTED personal computers... no one else... he did it first... hp said it was crap so they recused all rights <probably still hurting from that mistake!!!>...
anyways, his engineering principles absolutely pioneered personal computing for the first decade or so...
then there was steve jobs... w/o his marketing genius woz would have no clue what to do with the powerful machine he had... he would probably have worked on it alone at home and make it into some kind of fun hobby... he deserves just as much credit for bringing us the home computer...
again, like linus, no matter what people say about the "jobs distortion field," the man had vision and still has vision as his company still innovates (yes, i said innovate, cause they actually do <its debatable how much, but sufficient quantity for me to make the statement>, unlike a certain redmond-based company; its true that they dont innovate everything they say they innovate but still, they are a very powerful force within the industry even with their <3% marketshare; thats called power when even with such little marketshare, if u can change the tedium of an industry... ok, getting sidetracked now...)
anyways, regardless of his high prices or benchmark controversies, jobs managed to turn an ailing, dying company that everyone gave up into the moneymaking dynamo it is today <i would have given up on the company if i knew what was going on in the tech industry back in 96>... an example of the dynamo force can be seen when u see so many people/companies trying to duplicate the interface and feeling (even with the metal/aqua HIG controversies)...
so regardless of the hero worship found out there, jobs and woz deserve some credit, if not alot of the credit for the past, present, and future of computing as we know it... they are just as important in tech industry as linus is to free software & academia (again, refer to my previous post)
**********************
Side note:
somehow, i feel i have just incited the wrath of all zealots, anti-jobsites, anti-mac people, and trolls... no trolling or zealotry please!!!
To Bascule:
Bascule, i understand that Theo is a troll and pain in but sometimes (ok, alot of times) but his decision to split the bsd tree for perfection and higher standards has greatly led to the benefit of the bsds and all software as a whole... it further showed that branching is good (sometimes) and can work
N Wirth is the main man, he gave us atleast 4 succesfull programming languages AlgolW-Pascal, Modula-123, Oberon and even a HW language Lola. He also built the HW for computers and OSes & languages symbiotically, the only way to build the best. He has always strived to keep it as simple as possible rather than piling on features. Each project learns from the +-s of the previous work.
Alot of the other names are great too, but I think Wirth is one of the most acomplished allrounders there is as well as a great educator.
PS I don't use any of those languages but I wouldn't mind if I had too.
Aw, come on.. the most friendly, the cool guy that helps the kids, the hardware engineer (guys, I'm a hardware engineer, deep inside), the systems engineer, the one that crafted the first Apples.
My vote goes to Woz. Sadly missing from this list.
And sadly, no one is actually READING before voting.
....bummer, he would've gotten my vote
Patrick Volkerding (Slackware)
John Carmack (Has done incredible amount of work to increase computer rendering)
Steve Woz (Apple hardware design)
Larry Wall (Perl language)
Engineers are middle class successful people in society with incomes of $67,000 - $70,000 on average, but it's the power elite, the upper class that controls the factors of production and makes the decisions in the computer industry.
"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.
Lead GNU developer. Also the guys working on L4.
At the dawn of World War II, she co-invented non-FM, spread spectrum communications with George Antheil:
http://cooltown.hp.com/mpulse/1102-lamarr.asp
Better photo here:
http://www.sss-mag.com/shistory.html
Non-FM, spread spectrum is a widely used technology, utilized by GPS, 802.11, wireless phones, etc.
In addition, she was the first woman to appear nude in a feature film.
I only recognise some of these guys from places such as OpenBSD, linux, and Ximian... I assumed you ment icon from as far back as you could remember, not just living ones, from what i can tell (and i dont know half of them) they're all still alive.
Im sure their's people swearing black and blue about the atari and amiga creators that didnt get mentioned or others. I dont know or admire many people, expecialy in coding.
Although there are people that just do amazing things. Such as linus, and theo i think is particulary good, maybe even better than linus in my opinion, so i'll vote for him when i've finished this.
I forget, did steeve jobs get a mention? Surly he'd have to be there right? I think he's particulary clever how he markets apple and how he got it back on track with the Imac... and several people acknowledge how great NeXT was, despite its downfall, or whatever happened to it.
I also appreciate Olaf Barthels work on AmigaOS, and he is one reason why that operating system is still working today. And there are many others. Infact there are so many, perhaps would should just acknowledge a specific erra? like 70s 80s or 90s and which one had the largest impact on the PC... Maybe that'd have to be the 90s with the internet and such... but im getting severaly off topic enjoy the poll!
I voted for Jordan Hubbard because of all the work he did with FreeBSD. It is my second favorite OS with OS X being the first. Now he works for Apple which is cool.
Say what you want about Theo de Raadt but he and the others that work on OpenBSD make a great secure OS. If Jordan was not on the list, I would have went with Theo.
My favorite tech icon is the United States. That country owns the IT industry.
Surely? A whole generation grew up with his little plastic boxes.
I would have chosen Bjarne Stroustrup if he were on the list, but since he isn't I chose Mr. Spock.
But as I read they have to still be in the game... Dave Haynie, Carl Sassaranth?
I would also have thought that someone like Clive Sinclair might have been a good one, given that his little machine was most people (of the 80's generation) first sight of a home computer in the uk at least... shame too that he isn't in the game anymore (I think he died some time back but I can't remember off hand).
Carl Sassenrath of AmigaOS and REBOL fame.
would say Kurt Skauen (www.atheos.cx) if I knew what he was up to recently...
Because:
1. He created so much relevant work for CS
2. Here in the Netherlands nobody know who he is and nobody seem to care. There should be a statue for him IMHO.
3. I carry the same name and share the Fresian stubborn background of not compromising for quality and perfection
4. I particularly like the way he expressed himself regarding technology
Well, Raster is quite interesting, I would've voted for him. But I voted for Linus, it's hard to overestimate his impact.
If OBOS would've released their first release I would've voted for them (and if they had been in the poll...)
Where's Jef Raskin? The man that invented the GUI, first he worked at XEROX PARC, building that Alto-thing, later he started the Macintosh project at Apple.
He changed the (computer) world.
RMS
Rasterman
Marcus Brinkman
Keith Packard
Georgy Russell
I could have voted for several of the choices, but chose Avie for his understated role (Jobs gets all the credit:-) for helping bring Apple from the brink of disastor with the transformation of NeXT to OS X.
I know the others... but who is Linus Torvalds? :-) lol...
I really find this guy interesting his work on GUIs and Smalltalk have had a major impact on computer programming.
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.
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.
Old school Niklaus Wirth, "newer" school Bill Joy.