There are famous programmers, but Zed's right that they don't become famous because of their coding ability. I'd say they become famous because of impact. And I

There are famous programmers, but Zed's right that they don't become famous because of their coding ability. I'd say they become famous because of impact. And I'm thinking of the really famous (to us) coders here: Thompson, Richie, Fred Brooks, Dijkstra, Knuth, Larry Wall and so on. These people had an impact for market reasons, not for their code in itself: a need; an idea for a tool or product; and a benefit of it that met that need (not saying the need is first chronologically). In some cases, that "product" was something they wrote about programming, not their code at all. Programming: unimportant. Meeting needs: important.