This is a list of programmers notable for their contributions to software, either as original author or architect, or for later additions. All entries must already have associated articles. Some persons notable as computer scientists are included here because they work in program as well as research.
A
Michael Abrash – program optimization and x86 assembly language Scott Adams – series of text adventures beginning in the late 1970s Tarn Adams – Dwarf Fortress Leonard Adleman – co-created RSA algorithm (being the A in that name), coined the term computer virus Alfred Aho – co-created AWK (being the A in that name), and main author of famous Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Dragon book) Allan Alcorn – Pong Andrei Alexandrescu – author, expert on languages C++, D, and created the Loki library Frances Allen – optimizing compilers, program optimization, and parallel computing Paul Allen – Altair BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, cofounded Microsoft Eric Allman – sendmail, syslog Marc Andreessen – co-created Mosaic, cofounded Netscape Bruce Artwick – Microsoft Flight Simulator Jeremy Ashkenas – CoffeeScript programming language and Backbone.js Julian Assange – Surfraw, Rubberhose (file system), Strobe port scanner which influenced Nmap Bill Atkinson – QuickDraw, HyperCard Lennart Augustsson – languages (Lazy ML, Cayenne), compilers (HBC Haskell, parallel Haskell front end, Bluespec SystemVerilog early), LPMud pioneer, NetBSD device drivers
B
Roland Carl Backhouse – computer program construction, algorithmic problem solving, ALGOL Adam Back – Hashcash John Backus – Fortran, BNF Lars Bak – virtual machine specialist Richard Bartle – MUD, with Roy Trubshaw, created MUDs Friedrich L. Bauer – Stack (data structure), Sequential Formula Translation, ALGOL, software engineering, Bauer–Fike theorem Kent Beck – created Extreme programming, cocreated JUnit Donald Becker – Linux Ethernet drivers, Beowulf clustering Brian Behlendorf – Apache HTTP Server, co-founder of The Apache Software Foundation Doug Bell – Dungeon Master series of video games Fabrice Bellard – created FFmpeg open codec library, QEMU virtualization tools Tim Berners-Lee – invented World Wide Web Daniel J. Bernstein – djbdns, qmail Pierre Bézier – Bézier curve, Bézier surface, Computer-aided manufacturing, UNISURF Eric Bina – cocreated Mosaic web browser Marc Blank – cocreated Zork Jim Blinn – Blinn–Phong reflection model Joshua Bloch – core Java language designer, lead the Java collections framework project Jonathan Blow – video games: Braid, The Witness Susan G. Bond – cocreated ALGOL 68-R Grady Booch – cocreated Unified Modeling Language Ed Boon – Mortal Kombat Alan H. Borning – human–computer interaction, object-oriented programming, constraint programming, programming languages, ThingLab Bert Bos – authored Argo web browser, co-authored Cascading Style Sheets Keith Bostic – nvi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD Stephen R. Bourne – cocreated ALGOL 68C, created Bourne shell David Bradley – coder on the IBM PC project team who wrote the Control-Alt-Delete keyboard handler, embedded in all PC-compatible BIOSes Andrew Braybrook – video games Paradroid and Uridium Larry Breed – implementation of Iverson Notation (APL), co-developed APL\360, Scientific Time Sharing Corporation cofounder Jack Elton Bresenham – created Bresenham's line algorithm Dan Bricklin – cocreated VisiCalc, the first personal spreadsheet program Walter Bright – Digital Mars, First C++ compiler, authored D (programming language) Sergey Brin – cofounded Google Inc. Per Brinch Hansen (surname "Brinch Hansen") – RC 4000 multiprogramming system, operating system kernels, microkernels, monitors, concurrent programming, Concurrent Pascal, distributed computing & processes, parallel computing Richard Brodie – Microsoft Word Andries Brouwer – Hack, former maintainer of man pager, Linux kernel hacker Paul Buchheit – created Gmail Danielle Bunten Berry (Dani Bunten) – M.U.L.E., multiplayer video game and other noted video games Rod Burstall – languages COWSEL (renamed POP-1), POP-2, NPL, Hope; ACM SIGPLAN 2009 PL Achievement Award Vitalik Buterin – Ethereum Dries Buytaert – created Drupal
C
Steve Capps – cocreated Macintosh and Newton John Carmack – first-person shooters Doom, Quake Edwin Catmull – co-founder of Pixar, Catmull–Rom spline, Catmull–Clark subdivision surface, texture mapping Vint Cerf – TCP/IP, NCP Timothy M. Chan – Chan's algorithm Donald D. Chamberlin – SQL David Chaum – blind signatures, International Association for Cryptologic Research, mix-net, electronic voting, Dining cryptographers protocol, privacy-enhancing technologies, and the godfather of digital currency Steve Chen – co-founder of YouTube, AVOS, and part of the PayPal Mafia Ward Christensen – wrote the first BBS (Bulletin Board System) system CBBS Edgar F. Codd – principal architect of relational model Bram Cohen – BitTorrent protocol design and implementation Alain Colmerauer – Prolog Richard W. Conway – compilers for CORC, CUPL, and PL/C; XCELL Factory Modelling System Alan Cooper – Visual Basic Fernando J. Corbató – Multics and Compatible Time-Sharing System Mike Cowlishaw – REXX and NetRexx, LEXX editor, image processing, decimal arithmetic packages Alan Cox – co-developed Linux kernel Brad Cox – Objective-C Mark Crispin – created IMAP, authored UW-IMAP, one of reference implementations of IMAP4 William Crowther – Colossal Cave Adventure Ward Cunningham – created Wiki concept Dave Cutler – architected RSX-11M, OpenVMS, VAXELN, DEC MICA, Windows NT Doug Cutting – Apache Hadoop, Apache Lucene, Apache Nutch
D
Ole-Johan Dahl – cocreated Simula, object-oriented programming Ryan Dahl – created Node.js Wei Dai – Crypto++ library, b-money, VMAC Terry A. Davis – developer of TempleOS Jeff Dean – Spanner, Bigtable, MapReduce, TensorFlow L. Peter Deutsch – Ghostscript, Assembler for PDP-1, XDS-940 timesharing system, QED original co-author Robert Dewar – IFIP WG 2.1 member, chairperson, ALGOL 68; AdaCore cofounder, president, CEO Edsger W. Dijkstra – contributions to ALGOL, Dijkstra's algorithm, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, IFIP WG 2.1 member Matt Dillon – programmed various software including DICE and DragonflyBSD Jack Dorsey – created Twitter Martin Dougiamas – creator and lead developed Moodle Adam Dunkels – authored Contiki operating system, the lwIP and uIP embedded TCP/IP stacks, invented protothreads Pavel Durov — co-founding of VK and Telegram
E
Les Earnest – authored finger program Alan Edelman – Edelman's Law, stochastic operator, Interactive Supercomputing, Julia (programming language) cocreator, high performance computing, numerical computing Brendan Eich – created JavaScript Larry Ellison – co-created Oracle Database, cofounded Oracle Corporation Andrey Ershov – languages ALPHA, Rapira; first Soviet time-sharing system AIST-0, electronic publishing system RUBIN, multiprocessing workstation MRAMOR, IFIP WG 2.1 member, Aesthetics and the Human Factor in Programming Marc Ewing – created Red Hat Linux
F
Scott Fahlman – created smiley face emoticon :-) Dan Farmer – created COPS and Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN) Security Scanners Steve Fawkner – created Warlords and Puzzle Quest Craig Federighi – NeXTSTEP and Apple senior vice president Stuart Feldman – created make, authored Fortran 77 compiler, part of original group that created Unix David Filo – cocreated Yahoo! Hal Finney — helped Satoshi Nakamoto debug Bitcoin, reusable proof-of-work, and early developer of Pretty Good Privacy. Brad Fitzpatrick – created memcached, Livejournal and OpenID Andrew Fluegelman – author PC-Talk communications software; considered a cocreated shareware Scott Forstall – lead software developer during the creation of iOS for iPad and iPhone Martin Fowler – created the dependency injection pattern of software engineering, a form of inversion of control Brian Fox – created Bash, Readline, GNU Finger Nick Frosst – co-founder of the Toronto-based AI company Cohere
G
Elon Gasper – cofounded Bright Star Technology, patented realistic facial movements for in-game speech; HyperAnimator, Alphabet Blocks, etc. Bill Gates – Altair BASIC, cofounded Microsoft Jim Gettys – X Window System, HTTP/1.1, One Laptop per Child, Bufferbloat Steve Gibson – created SpinRite John Gilmore – GNU Debugger (GDB) Adele Goldberg – cocreated Smalltalk Ian Goldberg – Off-the-record messaging Ryan C. Gordon (a.k.a. Icculus) – Lokigames, ioquake3 James Gosling – Java, Gosling Emacs, NeWS Bill Gosper – Macsyma, Lisp machine, hashlife, helped Donald Knuth on Vol.2 of The Art of Computer Programming (Semi-numerical algorithms) Paul Graham – Yahoo! Store, On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp John Graham-Cumming – authored POPFile, a Bayesian filter-based e-mail classifier Richard Greenblatt – Lisp machine, Incompatible Timesharing System, MacHack Brendan Gregg – eBPF, DTrace toolkit David Gries – The book The Science of Programming, Interference freedom, Member Emeritus, IFIP Working Group 2.3 on Programming Methodology Ralph Griswold – cocreated SNOBOL, created Icon (programming language) Robert Griesemer – cocreated Go Neil J. Gunther – authored Pretty Damn Quick (PDQ) performance modeling program Scott Guthrie (a.k.a. ScottGu) – ASP.NET creator Jürg Gutknecht – with Niklaus Wirth: Lilith computer; Modula-2, Oberon, Zonnon programming languages; Oberon operating system Andi Gutmans – cocreated PHP programming language Michael Guy – Phoenix, work on number theory, computer algebra, higher dimension polyhedra theory, ALGOL 68C; work with John Horton Conway
H
Daniel Ha – cofounder and CEO of blog comment platform Disqus Nico Habermann – work on operating systems, software engineering, inter-process communication, process synchronization, deadlock avoidance, software verification, programming languages: ALGOL 60, BLISS, Pascal, Ada Jim Hall – started the FreeDOS project Margaret Hamilton – Director of Software Engineering Division of MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the space Apollo program Brian Harris – machine translation research, Canada's first computer-assisted translation course, natural translation theory, community interpreting (Critical Link) Donald Haderle – one of the first commercial RDBMSs the IBM Db2 Juris Hartmanis – Computational complexity theory Eric Hehner – predicative programming, formal methods, quote notation, ALGOL David Heinemeier Hansson – created the Ruby on Rails framework for developing web applications Rebecca Heineman – authored Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars Gernot Heiser – operating system teaching, research, commercialising, Open Kernel Labs, OKL4, Wombat Anders Hejlsberg – Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, TypeScript Ted Henter – founded Henter-Joyce (now part of Freedom Scientific) created JAWS screen reader software for blind people Andy Hertzfeld – co-created Macintosh, cofounded General Magic, cofounded Eazel Joe Hewitt — Firebug and DOM Inspector D. Richard Hipp – created SQLite C. A. R. Hoare – first implementation of quicksort, ALGOL 60 compiler, Communicating sequential processes Louis Hodes – Lisp, pattern recognition, logic programming, cancer research John Henry Holland – pioneer in what became known as genetic algorithms, developed Holland's schema theorem, Learning Classifier Systems Adrian Holovaty — Django (web framework) Allen Holub – author and public speaker, Agile Manifesto signatory Bri Holt – founder of Vidmeter and Engrade Grace Hopper – Harvard Mark I computer, FLOW-MATIC, COBOL Ben Horowitz – Netscape product manager and Opsware co-founder and CEO Paul Hudak – Haskell language design, textbooks on it and computer music Tom Hudson – 3D Studio, CAD-3D, DEGAS David A. Huffman – created the Huffman coding; a compression algorithm Roger Hui – co-authored J Dave Hyatt – co-authored Mozilla Firefox P. J. Hyett – cofounded GitHub
I
Miguel de Icaza – GNOME project leader, initiated Mono project