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It's a good point that programmers only become famous among non-programmers because of non-code reasons, but the same applies to specialists in almost any techn
by jarin 16y ago
It's a good point that programmers only become famous among non-programmers because of non-code reasons, but the same applies to specialists in almost any technical field (except for maybe physics and math).
- bad_user 16y ago> It's a good point that programmers only become famous among programmers because of non-code reasons There, fixed that for you.
- btmorex 16y agoActually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc. To be honest, Zed Shaw seems to be the exception since he's almost certainly more well known for blogging than any code that he's written.
- lelele 16y ago> Actually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc. Not at all: "Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day. [...] Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up." Can you name 4 people on Linux, Perl, etc. core teams? I'd bet you can't. Or do we think that Torvalds, Wall, etc. wrote the software they are famous for on their own? That's what Zed is talking about.
- btmorex 16y agoI was responding to the poster I responded to, not Zed's post. Specifically, I think most famous programmers (at least among other programmers) are famous for what they coded. That said, I can actually name 4 core contributers to Linux although I'm not sure what the significance of that might be (Linus, Ted T'so, David Miller, Andrew Morton).
- nailer 16y agoLinus, Chris Mason (who's doing BtrFS), Ulrich Drepper (because he's really angry all the time), and uh, that British guy who's number 2. Damnit, you're right.
- stonemetal 16y agoAll of those guys are famous for leading a project not the code they have written for those projects.
- plinkplonk 16y ago"All of those guys are famous for leading a project not the code they have written for those projects." Well duh, what made them leaders of these projects in the first place?
- stonemetal 16y agoPeople skills? I didn't get into Linux until much latter but from what I understand Linux as written by Linus wasn't that great. It was submissions and work by people better than himself that made Linux what it is today. His ability to code may have grown since then but his super wonder coding powers aren't what got Linux off the ground.
- plinkplonk 16y ago"People skills?" classic Office Space scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti53kjHsAas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti53kjHsAas
- acangiano 16y agoIncluding physics and math. With very few exceptions, you only know about scientists when they step outside of their specialized fields and make an effort to popularize their discipline to the general public.
- arethuza 16y agoThe only exception I can think to this is 19th century engineer Brunel - he came 2nd in the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel By way of comparison, TBL was 99th.
- Psyonic 16y agoIt's somewhat similar to how Malcolm Gladwell gets all the credit for popularizing ideas discovered/researched by other people (10,000 hours, etc). Fame takes work, just like everything else.