5 ms·

(only including people who wrote massive amounts of important and complex code themselves and quite possibly dozen median engineers wouldn’t have cut it) John

(only including people who wrote massive amounts of important and complex code themselves and quite possibly dozen median engineers wouldn’t have cut it) John Carmack Dennis Ritchie Ken Thompson Bill Gates Donald Knuth Jeff Dean Brian Kernighan

lallysingh 8y ago
It's a combination of finding someone really talented, putting them in an area where their talent gets well used, and giving them lots of freedom to implement as they wish.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Being there at the right time helps as well, there were lots of low hanging fruit waiting to be picked.
- tinkerteller 8y ago
  This list is not about talent finders/leaders/managers. It's about people who wrote ton of code to accomplish something by themselves that would have been very very hard for a good manager to accomplish by simply lining up big team of median engineers.
a7776f88862 8y ago
I would strongly disagree on the Bill Gates part. The early Microsoft compilers (yes, Microsoft started out as a compiler company) were by all accounts not that great. The really successful and technically impressive Microsoft projects have always been acquisitions. The technically best (or the only decent, depending on who you talk to) Microsoft product is SQL Server, which started out as a Sybase fork.
- not_real_acct 8y ago
  As I understand it, Microsoft's success is largely because they poached an operating system contract. Basically the CEO of their competition was on a two-week vacation and there was no way to get in contact with him. So the contract went to Microsoft by default. Then Microsoft purchased an existing operating system and hacked it for their client. And the rest is history.
- tinkerteller 8y ago
  Original interpreter Gates wrote was pretty hard. Imagine flipping switches to enter a program to do entire BASIC interpreter. You are literally entering machine code, not even Assembly. In those days doing any compiler or interpreter was a monumental amount of work and there was a reason Gates was able to sale his work to establish fairly profitable company standing on just one product: BASIC interpreter. He is not in this list for his later successes as businessman or leader but the fact he was able to code this almost single handedly.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    I was in high school at the time, and Gate's interpreter was buggy and lame. I could have done better, and knew it at the time. Fortunately the quality of his software had nothing to do with his success. It was about marketing and business timing.
    - tinkerteller 8y ago
      People took his code and re-distributed en-mass. BASIC paid the Microsoft bills for almost 4 years. Are you saying people stole and/or paid for unusable code?
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Buggy, lame code still let you do something with your shiny new computing device. Early adopters will put up with anything. Which Gates understood very well. It was about timing, not quality.
  - slededit 8y ago
    He wrote his interpreter on a larger machine (PDP-11 I think), and tested it on an emulator they wrote. When they got to MITS to show off their code that was the first time it ever ran on real hardware. They did not develop BASIC by flipping switches.
    - a7776f88862 8y ago

lallysingh 8y ago

It's a combination of finding someone really talented, putting them in an area where their talent gets well used, and giving them lots of freedom to implement as they wish.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Being there at the right time helps as well, there were lots of low hanging fruit waiting to be picked.
tinkerteller 8y ago
This list is not about talent finders/leaders/managers. It's about people who wrote ton of code to accomplish something by themselves that would have been very very hard for a good manager to accomplish by simply lining up big team of median engineers.

a7776f88862 8y ago

I would strongly disagree on the Bill Gates part. The early Microsoft compilers (yes, Microsoft started out as a compiler company) were by all accounts not that great. The really successful and technically impressive Microsoft projects have always been acquisitions. The technically best (or the only decent, depending on who you talk to) Microsoft product is SQL Server, which started out as a Sybase fork.

not_real_acct 8y ago
As I understand it, Microsoft's success is largely because they poached an operating system contract. Basically the CEO of their competition was on a two-week vacation and there was no way to get in contact with him. So the contract went to Microsoft by default. Then Microsoft purchased an existing operating system and hacked it for their client. And the rest is history.
tinkerteller 8y ago
Original interpreter Gates wrote was pretty hard. Imagine flipping switches to enter a program to do entire BASIC interpreter. You are literally entering machine code, not even Assembly. In those days doing any compiler or interpreter was a monumental amount of work and there was a reason Gates was able to sale his work to establish fairly profitable company standing on just one product: BASIC interpreter. He is not in this list for his later successes as businessman or leader but the fact he was able to code this almost single handedly.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I was in high school at the time, and Gate's interpreter was buggy and lame. I could have done better, and knew it at the time. Fortunately the quality of his software had nothing to do with his success. It was about marketing and business timing.
  - tinkerteller 8y ago
    People took his code and re-distributed en-mass. BASIC paid the Microsoft bills for almost 4 years. Are you saying people stole and/or paid for unusable code?
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Buggy, lame code still let you do something with your shiny new computing device. Early adopters will put up with anything. Which Gates understood very well. It was about timing, not quality.
- slededit 8y ago
  He wrote his interpreter on a larger machine (PDP-11 I think), and tested it on an emulator they wrote. When they got to MITS to show off their code that was the first time it ever ran on real hardware. They did not develop BASIC by flipping switches.
  - a7776f88862 8y ago