Who are the top programmers in the world? If you are an upcoming programmer, I’m sure you may have asked this question, or perhaps you have a passion to know about people who have made an impact in our world because they inspire you. You too may have asked the same question.
The world we live in today has been made much more easier and fun through the presence of technology that was introduced by some of the top programmers in the world. I’m sure you are curious to know some of the top programmers in the world and their exceptional work. In this article, we’ll be looking at 8 of the top programmers in the world, You could learn a lot from their lives and their works.
Top Programmers of the World
Let’s look at some of the top programmers in the world who, through their creativity and contributions, have influenced the world and made it easier today. We’ll be looking at some of these great programmers, their innovation, and their outstanding work in the software programming world.
1. Dennis Ritchie
The first programmer on our list of top programmers in the world is Dennis Ritchie. Dennis Ritchie is widely known as the “Father of the C programming language.” He was also widely known for creating the UNIX operating system, along with Ken Thompson, who was also a programmer and his colleague.
Due to his innovations and contributions, Dennis Ritchie, who is an American computer scientist, has received a lot of awards and recognition. In 1990, he received the Hamming Medal from the IEEE; in 1983, Dennis Ritchie was recognized again; he received the Turing Award from the ACM, and in 1999, he also got the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton.
In 2007, Dennis Ritchie retired, and until he retired, he was the head of the Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department. Without Dennis Ritchie’s invention of the C programming language, there would be no UNIX, Windows, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Linux, C++, Xbox, MacOSX, Playstation, and a lot of other software devices. In short, modern computing would not have existed. Over 90% of software applications in the world are written in the C programming language and that’s why Dennis Ritchie deserves a lot of respect.
2. Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is the next top programmer of the world on our list. Linus is an American software engineer but has a very interesting life. Linus came from a family of journalists but he decided to choose something different and this made him well known over the world.
Linus Torvalds made waves in the world of programming when he founded the Linux kernel operating system, and the interesting thing was that he founded this operating system in his dorm room when he was still a student at the University of Helsinki.
Linus Torvalds also created the distributed control system Git (open source), which is used all over the world. Linus Torvalds has been recognized and has won a lot of awards. In 1998, Linus was honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Pioneer Award, and the next year, in 1999, he was awarded as one of the top 100 innovators under 35’ in the world, and this award was given by MIT Technology Review TR100.
In 2000 he was awarded the Lovelace Medal, by the British Computer Society, and the next award he got was in 2012 where he received the Millennium Technology Prize.
3. Bjarne Stroustrup
Bjarne Stroustrup is next on the list of top programmers in the world. Bjarne Stroustrup is a computer scientist. He is well known because it is said that he invented and evolved the most widely used programming language, C++, solely without any assistance.
Bjarne Stroustrup has been recognized for his innovative works and contributions to programming. In 2015, Bjarne Stroustrup was awarded the Senior Dahl-Nygaard Prize, two years later, in 2017, he was a recipient of the Faraday Medal, which was given by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the following year, he was the recipient of the 2018 Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society and recently, he received an honorary doctorate from the University Carlos III, Spain.
Bjarne Stroustrup is currently employed as a Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. He’s also a managing director at Morgan Stanley and a visiting professor at Columbia University.
4. James Gosling
Dr. James Arthur Gosling is one of the top programmers in the world. He is a computer scientist from Canada and an officer of the Order of Canada. He is widely known across the world as the ‘Father of Java programming language’. He designed and produced the mainframe for Java and he also developed the original compiler and virtual machine
James Gosling has also made contributions to other software systems like NeWS and Gosling Emacs. For his outstanding contribution and extraordinary work, he was elected to be a member of the Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Engineering.
5. Tim Berners-Lee
“Tim” Berners-Lee is popularly known as “TimBL,”. TimBL is a British computer scientist and is popularly known for his contribution to the 3 fundamental technologies HTML, URL, and HTTP. In 1989, he introduced the world wide web and he was the first person to have successfully carried out communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol client and server via the Internet.
Tim has won a lot of awards for his outstanding work. He was one of five Internet and Web pioneers who received the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. In 2016, he was awarded the 2016 ACM Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web. TimBL is currently the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); he is also a well-respected senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
6. Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is known as the Father of the analysis of algorithms because of his contributions to the development of the analysis of algorithms. Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician, and he’s also a retired Professor at Stanford University.
Apart from being a professor at Stanford University, Donald Knuth is also an Author. He wrote and is the author of “The Art of Computer Programming”. In addition to being the Father of the analysis of algorithms, Donald also invented the TeX computer typesetting system and the METAFONT font definition language and rendering system.
For his outstanding works and contributions, he has received a lot of awards. In 1971, he was awarded the first ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. Three years later, in 1974, he also received the Turing Award; after this, in 1979, he was also given The National Medal of Science. These are just a few of the many more awards he has received.
7. Ken Thompson
Kenneth Lane Thompson is the next top programmer on our list. Ken is well known for his contributions to the UNIX operating system. Thompson spent a lot of time at Bell Labs creating and developing the B programming language, which is the next programming language after the C programming language.
Ken Thompson has partnered and worked with a lot of organizations as a programmer, including Google. While he worked at Google, he co-invented the Go programming language. He has received a lot of awards for his outstanding contributions.
8. Brian Wilson Kernighan
We’re still looking at some of the top programmers in the world. The last programmer on our list of top programmers in the world is Brian Kernighan.
Brian Kernighan is a Canadian computer scientist who also worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of the Unix operating system, partnering with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Remember, we’ve spoken about Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie earlier. Apart from his contributions to the UNIX operating system, Brian Kernighan is also the coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages.
Brian Kernighan became widely known when he co-authored the very first book on the C programming language. This has helped a lot of programmers and developers learn more about the C programming language. In 2000, Brian Kernighan became a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, and up till now, he’s still a professor there.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve looked at some of the top programmers in the world. Now, It is very important to point out that these eight programmers listed above are not the only talented and well-known programmers in the world, there are a lot of skilled programmers in the world who have made valuable contributions to the world of programming, and there are also upcoming programmers in training that are very talented and will also contribute greatly to the world of programming.
All these programmers listed above apart from being very popular have made valuable contributions in their various fields, coming up with innovation and brilliant ideas, just like the contribution of Tim Berners-Lee’s work on the World Wide Web changed the way communication and information are being shared in our world today.