The Most Legendary Programmers Of All Time

[@AaronJack]

Free Beginner Programming Course coursecareers.com/a/aaronjack Free JavaScript Cheat Sheet dontforgetjavascript.com/ Free Coding Advice (We'll Send you a Video) aaronjack.dev

[@lantousaturn6115]

@#$% list, no Terry Davis?! Something is wrong with you if you can't see how he is the GOAT. Or worse, you can't acknowledge it because he wasn't an NPC z0g drone. you soy af 01101110 01101001 01100111 01100111 01100101 01110010 lol lmao even

[@jamesgoatcher]

Terry Davis is the only S Tier programmer to have existed. The world couldn’t even handle him so it had to deallocate him from memory.

[@goawqebt6931]

Deallocate 🤣

[@raylopez99]

Interesting story. Seems he deleted a bunch of his work before his untimely death by train, like he anticipated being deallocated. I hobby code but had never heard of him until today. RIP.

[@bmpetrov]

Dennis Ritchie created Unix and C. Go beat that 😁

[@6ujkyujhrbdfgjy5]

@@bmpetrov Yeah but he couldn't talk to God.

[@goawqebt6931]

@@bmpetrov Terry created his own language too, from which he created his operating system TempleOS, from the bootloader all the way to the games in the system, all alone by himself, through his schizophrenia and homelessness

[@danford6678]

I mean Linus Torvald also made GIT which has had more impact on modern programming than any single language by itself.

[@danilo2735]

that my friend is correct!!!

[@roguestargun]

Git is not the sole source control system. Arguably in terms of API its probably one of the worst. But like Linux it's FOSS!

[@m8onethousand]

@@roguestargun Source control systems before git were an absolute mess though, which is why it became so popular. It got right all the important things every other system at the time got wrong.

[@danilo2735]

@@roguestargun if you think git is the worst, which one is better? SVN?

[@winfriedmaus]

Did it? Back in the day everybody used CVS and didn't even talk about it, because that was the freely available tool of the day. Then came SVN, the Microsoft world has TFS and there's a crap load of other solutions out there that all try to solve the same problem. Torvalds wrote git because the company behind the proprietary - but free of cost - tool that he originally used at some point decided to charge money for it. So, yeah, he then decided to spend two or three days on writing the first version of git and it became incredibly successful (because he had the power to force it onto all Linux kernel developers) and it now does impact the way how many developers' use a source code repository - for better or for worse. But impacting the way how you use a source code repository, well, does not impact programming at all. At the end of the day, it's just one of many available versioning tools.

[@suryamdg]

Chris Sawyer definitely deserves to be here. He is the person who created Rollercoaster Tycoon using x86 assembly language all by himself.

[@user-og9nl5mt1b]

I agree

[@ilovecookiesization]

Came here to say this

[@Ghareebz]

i was about to say that

[@torarinvik4920]

That pretty awesome. I can't remember his name but the guy who made Doom run on SNES in the 90s is also super talented. He did a lot of other things like hardware ect.

[@ansrhl9448]

was waiting for this comment.

[@lowcarbRD]

Seems to me that some of the most successful people in their fields never even tried to become successful. They just loved what they were doing.

[@mr.d1796]

They’re essentially all soft skill lacking Reddit neckbeards, especially the Minecraft douchewagon

[@MrFaradayMaxwell]

that is the secret

[@stack-dhruv]

In programming, you have to love what you are doing... Otherwise, it will lead to burnout, cigars, and coffee breaks like everyone else. Its obvious though that not everyone is made to write programs in front of computers.

[@ZverseZ]

@@stack-dhruv I get burnt out on the linux terminal so I could never :(

[@stack-dhruv]

@@ZverseZ It's not your fault BTW, don't be hard on yourself 😂

[@natej1026]

Terry Davis had a level of intelligence that we can’t even calculate.

[@davidrudpedersen5622]

I mean, Linus made an OS that is actually used in the world. Terry Davis made one too, but noone uses it (i hope)

[@natej1026]

@@davidrudpedersen5622 Terry single-handedly coded Temple in his own original version of C. He created a kernel and compiler alone. There’s no question that Linus accomplished a lot, but he didn’t undertake the same task.

[@hiddensense4459]

@@natej1026 All while with ranging schizophrenia a illness that makes most basic of tasks x1000 harder and toxic home life and latter homelessness. Can you imagen him with a healthy mind and good environment? He really might have been the best programmer to live for real.

[@dodoguy]

​@@davidrudpedersen5622as a derranged computer engineering student i use templeos as my "toy" and it's freaking brilliant

[@dodoguy]

​i totally agree. The man was a treasure

[@pranaypallavtripathi2460]

I think very old programmers like Richard Stallman (founder of GNU project), Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson also deserve a mention here. I think some of those even received the Turing Award which, as people say, is the noble prize of computer science.

[@darukutsu]

Gnu tools are amazing... Kernel is just kernel. Definitely deserves more recognition apart from memes.

[@pranaypallavtripathi2460]

@@darukutsu I fully agree.

[@lanatrzczka]

I would add to your list Dave Cutler.

[@jacobzimmerman3492]

From a good bit earlier, I'd say John McCarthy is up there too. The original LISP meta evaluator is probably one of the finest programs ever.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Uh....Isn't the GNU project the works of other people RMS took and made into an OS?

[@ilsospetto4608]

No mention to Dennis Ritchie? Gosling? Terry Davis? What the heck is this ranking?

[@antmoundsock1122]

notch but no dennis richie is crazy

[@KonbunTiggles76]

Linus Torvalds: 1000x Dev Me: 0.5x Dev

[@rejiix]

I would be happy to be 1/2000ths of Linus Torvalds as a dev.

[@DudeWatIsThis]

If my 60-year old uncle made a video about programmers:

[@HCaetano]

What about Terry Davis? The guy created his own OS all by himself, a feat almost nobody can achieve. He deserves a spot on this list.

[@peral9728]

Terry Davis wasn't an amazing programmer. He was pretty good, and terrifyingly dedicated, but his language and OS weren't super impressive by any standard except the circumstances of their creation.

[@quixotik1021]

@@peral9728okay but HolyC is arguably better for modern use than C. He didn’t just create an OS, but an entire suite of programs for it as well. A programmer’s programmer.

[@yogxoth1959]

@@quixotik1021 Explain how HolyC is better than C.

[@quixotik1021]

@@yogxoth1959No

[@sukapow]

@@yogxoth1959 It's God writing C. That's why it's better than C

[@melodyogonna]

I can't believe you didn't mention Ken Thompson here. He created Unix, which Linus basically copied. Ken wrote the first version of Unix in assembly btw, in 3 weeks. He created Regex as we know it; He created the B programming language, which Dennis Ritchie added static typing to, which made C; he created Ed text editor, (which later evolved to Vi, then Vim) which changed text editing; He created Belle, a the first chess machine to achieve master level, before AI was even a thing; He created UTF-8 (with Rop Pike) which is pretty much the standard text encoding today. And later in his career he helped design the Go Programming language (wrote the first compiler which was used until Go 1.5). Go has become the standard language for cloud computing and networked applications. How do you mention legendary programmers of all time without mentioning Ken Thompson? Man's work has probably had the most transformative effect on how people worked with computers, time and time again.

[@lanatrzczka]

Well the video creator said, Eye Dee Software so that tells you how much research went into making this video.

[@CounterDayHay]

DAMN, Unix, Regex, C language predecessor, VIM predecessor, First master level chess bot, UTF-8, Go. Super impressive contributions

[@milasudril]

I fully agree. No C, no Linux, no DOOM. And no UNIX, no notion of files as general data, only record based files, where the record length must be set upon file creation. In the extension, no DOOM without UNIX. Have you ever written a file path? That is UNIX. Thus Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are at least the most influential programmers ever. However John D Carmack did an excellent job of squeezing every frame out of the poor 80286 with Commander Keen. And the same for the 80486 with DOOM. Yes, DOOM runs on a 386, but it is essentially a slide show.

[@markgreen2170]

@@milasudril claude shannon, john backus ...really, there are thousands aren't there?

[@nikhilk7493]

Andrew Tanenbaum + Colleagues + more University Teachers = Minix Linux = Modified copy of Minix

[@rohan1765]

Linux and Git pretty much covers the entirety of the internet , Doesn't it?

[@_Code.Pilot_]

lol, no

[@swpyro]

Lmao

[@metalskull8687]

that's deep

[@sofianey3490]

As GIT is such a great way to handle collaborative projects and is the place that holds most of the code base used in the world with no « platform discrimination » while Linux is used in raw or forked versions on a wide variety of devices, I guess you could say these two are covering the world

[@AndoShy]

@sofianey3490 fyi git != GitHub

[@jaganraajan]

And here I am trying hard to code a todo list without struggling

[@danieltkach2330]

I'm sure Linus Trovals struggled with his first few lines of codes, even when doing a "todo list" app in C for the first time. Just keep going.

[@cutyoursoul4398]

struggle is part of learning

[@lordantispiral]

What kind of list is a todo list? Never heard of it

[@nobodythenobody9779]

Yo same

[@blubaylon]

@@lordantispiral he means a to-do list (A list where you write what you need to do)

[@Nadzap]

How you gonna have Notch on here but no Stallman, Terry Davis, or Wozniak?

[@DEBO5]

Especially Woz in terms of impact. Terry for raw ability

[@golangismyjam]

Terry Davis was a very smart man with unlimited time on his hands because he couldn't function in life at a basic level. Most programmers with unlimited time and no responsibilities could do what he did. He is held in high regard by the super religious simply because of the religious element to his programming, if there was no religion in it he would be lost to time. Wozniak was an electrical engineer that worked mainly on the hardware aspect of things. Stallman hasn't really done anything that is technically impressive.

[@whorrus]

Minecraft was inspired by infiniminer so it's like the case of Facebook that he mentioned earlier in the video.

[@Nadzap]

@@golangismyjam Complete nonsense. Even if it was their full time job for 10 years, almost any programmer would struggle to build a compiler, much less a JIT compiler, or even less an entire operating system to the scale that Terry did. Although he was troubled, he was an exceptional talent, and this is widely recognized outside the religious community. Much of Wozniak's philosophy surrounding hardware was driven by his love and penchant for software. See his contributions to DOS, integer BASIC, early graphics software, etc. He is unequivocally one of the most savvy and talented programmers ever, even if his focus was primarily hardware. Stallman literally created GCC and Emacs. You have lost your mind if you don't think that is technically impressive.

[@odytrice]

For me Linus Torvalds is the GOAT. It’s one thing to make a world changing software once like Minecraft or Doom. But it’s another thing to do it TWICE with both Linux and Git Linus once said “I like C because when I write in C, I can see in my mind the assembly it will generate”. As someone who writes code for a living, I respect that because I know what it takes to get that level of understanding

[@lolilollolilol7773]

Most importantly, it's extremely rare if not almost unique to see a developer dedicated to ONE complex product for decades and growing 2 or 3 orders of magnitude in complexity and still being sharp enough 38 years later to head its development without failing. I don't think there is any other example of that in the entire industry.

[@computerscience1101]

For me Terry Davis is GOAT

[@vladimirarnost8020]

Actually, assembly is pretty easy, it's just totally *different* from any other typical high-level programming language. I claim it's easier to learn e.g. x86 assembly well than the whole C++ language well. After all, I learned 8080, Z-80 and 80x86 assembly before I turned 16. (I did not know C nor C++ back then.) Mastering C++ took me much longer and I'm still learning new techniques and idioms even after being a professional C++ developer for the past 22+ years. I fully agree that C code is much easier to read, reason about and imagine what the underlying CPU is actually doing. Just my 20 m$.

[@codeman99-dev]

Literally both tools were timed perfectly. Linus is a great at many things. He didn't set out to change the world. The community did.

[@nathanhargenrader645]

Tbf carmack made so much more than doom that is selling him so short. Keen, wolfenstein, doom, quake, work on ai and vr have all been massive

[@TheMANOS0001]

Nobody is talking about Chris Sawyer, who crated RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language by himself

[@thomallan6937]

I thought the same thing

[@nathanhargenrader645]

That wasn’t that uncommon back then. Carmack made a number of games in assembly

[@golangismyjam]

​@@nathanhargenrader645you really think people were making games in x86 assembly in 99? Not to mention singlehandedly? Console Devs with much more limited hardware capability had moved on from assembly at that point. Pretty much everybody was using C or C++.

[@ControlAllDa1337]

I've had the privilege of working with a few truly genius developers over the years, it's crazy how dumb they can make you feel when you see them working. I wouldn't say Notch has created anything particularly impressive technically, but he's a proficient coder who is also very creative, which is far less common than most people realize. Most developers are very technical but lack true creativity, and most creative people aren't technically skilled enough to be programmers. There are always exceptions of course.

[@Ready4Whatever]

everybody is creative no such thing as a non-creative person.

[@philderkomischetyp4481]

@@Ready4Whatever thats wrong.

[@Kashyl]

@@Ready4Whatever haha

[@stickfigure31]

​@@Ready4Whatever This is just basic left vs right brain, I personally am definitely not creative. I can't come up with stories, draw, generally I just have no sense of aesthetics, and I prefer things that are more logically defined like physics and computers (math on it's own is boring to me, but when applied to physics or computers becomes very interesting). My Uncle is similar, even though he learned to play the piano as a kid in his 50s he still sounds very mechanical only ever playing sheet music by sight with no sense of life. You could argue the opposite, that there is no such thing a creative person. Because there is no such thing as a truly original thought that comes from a vacuum, all thoughts no matter who's are just regurgitation of their past experiences made abstract over time by floating around in the brain before re-surfacing. This perhaps is an extreme nihilistic view that implies no free will. I personally think there are creative people. As I personally feel I have seen and interacted with them, but I also think to a certain degree the former is true which is probably why I'm not as bothered by AI art as others are. Tangent; Past automation tools made it so creative people didn't need technical people's help on a project, AI art is just the reverse so that now technical people don't need create people's help on a project. Fair and balanced as all things should be.

[@AWZool]

@@Ready4Whatever Indians. They literally do what you ask of them and nothing more. (at least the majority of whom I had the misfortune to work with)

[@BEN-ys6gu]

5. Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of c++) 6. Terry A. Davis (creator of his own OS and compiler - TempleOS) 7. Chris Sawyer (creator of Rollercoaster Tycoon in Assembly)

[@lexsoft3969]

Regarding Linux, credit should also be given to Andrew Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum created Minix, a mini Unix variant which inspired Torvalds to create Linux. Tanenbaum didn't come from CS. He holds degree in Physics and Ph.D in Astrophysics. But he had written several books in Computer Architecture and Computer Networks which were widely used in colleges/universities, and like I said, created Minix. There are other Physics guys who became popular in CS fields : Dennis Richie, the creator of C language, has a degree in Physics and Applied Math. He also coworked with Ken Thompson to create Unix while working at Bell Labs. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of WWW/HTTP was a physics guy who created it while working at CERN.

[@2DarkHorizon]

Why is Linux slow and a resource hog like windows? I think a better OS can still be built.

[@2DarkHorizon]

@Fearless Joy Big mistake they never did it. Because when mobile technology came out efficiency was everything. They thought by making things resources hog people will need to upgrade their PCs and buy new software and OS. However that was in an ideal market when you got a near monopoly.

[@mrjshzk]

@@2DarkHorizon how is linux slow?

[@2DarkHorizon]

@@mrjshzk interface is slow. I saw an OS written in assembly seems much faster.

[@AndoShy]

@2DarkHorizon An OS written in assembly is impossible to maintain at scale across all the different architectures that exist, c'mon get real.

[@dim7ay]

My favorite quotes: "...like Windows 7, 8, 9, 10" "...Minecraft, released in 2019..."

[@atlantic_love]

Yeap, he doesn't even know what the hell he's talking about.

[@TD_JR]

Terry Davis is... likely at the very top of the heap. Imagine developing what he did while fighting Schizophrenia without any real assistance, meds, or counseling. It might be true that the line between genius and insanity is measured in success... and what Terry developed is a feat like none other. I wonder what he could have done without all that chaos in his head.

[@ignskeletons]

He was a gifted programmer trapped in an unfortunate body. He had a few screws loose, even if it was firing on all cylinders.

[@DanielSvenssonSwe]

Terry Davis created something really cool, he was a genius. But to my understanding, it had no impact. Noone (more or less) is using his OS.

[@alvelycken7893]

He's not Marcus Petersson, it's Markus Persson!

[@jannusdomingo5681]

Because of this, I've decided to create another taste of linux to build another minecraft but in 4d quality :D Just kidding, still learning JS for about 26yrs

[@lexsoft3969]

Still Learning JS for about 26 years ?

[@jannusdomingo5681]

@@lexsoft3969 Just kidding man, JS is 26yrs old now 😅

[@cabji]

@@jannusdomingo5681 maybe you were kidding... I can probably say I'm not. I remember when someone told me JS was the next big thing and I've idly tried to learn it since then. I think that was 2001.

[@bassam_salim]

@@cabji same but it was 2019 to me, I instead went to C++ and Java which I didn't like, then went to php which I hated, I think JS and node.js instead of php would be better for me at least

[@reasonerenlightened2456]

Why Uri Wilensky is not in the list. He should be.

[@ui6144]

Fabrice Bellard is an example of a programmer where nothing is seemingly impossible. Also, those console emulation authors we only know under their alias are truly legendary in my opinion.

[@lutuvarka2649]

They are insanely good. They often hook up to a chip, intercept binary and then understand how the system works. There was a video but I forgot the people involved or what was it about. The guy just figured out what those chips did... And acted like it was nothing. I later looked him up, he's actually working on some biology project... Something about nerves of the spine. I am a programmer and it's often a struggle to balance life with all the stuff I have to study just to make tiny incremental career advancements!

[@darkceptor44]

@@lutuvarka2649 saw a project on github these days that generates the bios file of a console from high-resolution images of the chip, it was probably based on that, crazy that someone managed to automate it

[@golangismyjam]

​@@lutuvarka2649you can make huge advancements in your career and knowledge by not working for other people. Like all of the people mentioned in the video and emulation authors like myself, find something you enjoy, program it and monetize it.

[@ericcouch]

Lot of people in these comments talking about the impact of the technology that various programmers produced, but if you want to talk about sheer genius code, you should take a look at GIT. It's a masterpiece of programming. No, I'm not talking about its "influence" or its popularity, I'm talking about how he coded it. Just the perspective of a 40+ year software engineer.

[@atlantic_love]

Minecraft was not released in 2019.

[@anilkumartb1788]

For me, the god of indie game developers is Chris Sawyer, who created a whole game using only assembly language (Roller Coaster Tycoon)

[@siphillis]

That wasn't super uncommon at the time. In terms of difficulty, John Carmack developing idTech for "Commander Keen" and "Wolfenstein 3-D" was far more in-depth.

[@aggserp4340]

I don't really think just writing a game in assembler is a huge enough achievement to put you in a "best programmers" list. Most video games from the atari all the way until the advent of CD media were written in assembly primarily because there simply wasn't enough space on the cartridge to fit code generated by the relatively "dumb" compilers of the era. Furthermore, assembler just isn't as hard as most people make it out to be. It's tedious for sure, it takes 10x as long to develop compared to something like C, but it's not dark magic and in some cases this tradeoff is worth the gains in speed/size. I honestly encourage any of you to learn x86 assembly and try converting some simple programs to it, you'll be surprised at how simple and fun it is.

[@reasonsreasonably]

@@aggserp4340 Agreed. Assembly language used to be all you had at your disposal. In High School I was learning assembly fwiw in the early 80s. Not that I got very far, but to say that someone creating a game in assembly makes them a 'god' of any sort just because they used assembly isn't nearly enough of a reason.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

I find strange that there's no mention of Steve Wozniak (without him, Apple wouldn't even exist), Dennis Ritchie (Creator of the C language), Brendan Eich (Creator of JavaScript) among others.

[@bobbyfried7478]

hey your right where was WOZ he deserves credit he did the heavy lifting..steve jobs was just a face.(although a brilliant one.) no bill gates which pleases me.

[@noodlechan_]

Michael Abrash is a master at programming in assembly languages. He was in Quake development at Id Software, he’s a master at computer graphics as well.

[@bungercolumbus]

I also love the people who work at Nolla Games and Tuxedo Studio. the ones behind Noita, the game where each pixel is physically simulated, and Teardown, the game where each voxel is physically simulated. It's really interesting to see how their games were coded into their own proprietary game engine. All the tricks they used.

[@kesorangutan6170]

This such a "tech bro" video. No Terry Davis, Richard Stallman, Chris Sawyer, Bjarne Stroustroup, Guido van Rossum and many more legendary names got mentioned.

[@MustangKepler]

1million bitcoin worth 5billion? Your a real genus programmer. Your Math is outstanding.

[@ifireblade09]

I think you've still underrated john carmack. 1. Commander keen was originally going to be a Mario Bros port. Before then you had specialised scrolling hardware on consoles. he developed a way to do smooth scrolling (double buffers) and eliminated overnight the need for specialized hardware. That was the beginning of true amazing console like gaming on a PC. 2. While wolfenstien and doom were great and added a ton of innovation, it was QUAKE that actually brought in true 3d that we still use today. Quake I think was his swansong to the gaming industry. - Light maps, full 6 axis of play, highly optimised to run on CPU's under 100mhz. - QuakeGL, it literally launched the 3d graphics card era we all love, and the optimisations to Glide(openGL) was far ahead of it's time. The entire industry was founded on this game. - QuakeWorld - His optimisations and re-write of quake's netcode fundamentally changed how we wrote server/client code for the internet (instead of LAN) - client side prediction with server side async updates. It was the first true Internet first person shooter that felt smooth and optimised for dial up connections! - Copying is the best form of flattery, Half life, unreal and everything else looked at this game as the template and infact most just extended the tech. Quake contributed more to modern 3d architecture than any game ever. John carmack's coding practices are mimicked world wide in a ubiquitous manner. Hence, he is the gaming god and you all need to bow down.

[@Zedem0n]

Unfortunately, Quake is often overlooked but it is probably one of the most important game of all time. You could also add that title to being the father of modern esports.

[@ifireblade09]

@@Zedem0n yep can't forget QuakeCon!

[@cchutney348]

@@Zedem0n This is the point where I think coding diverges from design. Quake was, in my very limited understanding, a true masterwork of Carmack, but it is also an ugly gray/brown mess. These games are so deeply rooted in nostalgia, that it's hard to compare technical merits. But I did buy it on the latest Steam sale, so maybe I will be proven wrong.

[@Frakenstien20]

Not to mention the fact that the man is a leading developer in the VR era and also has a space company. The man is a fucking genius

[@antmoundsock1122]

I know the codebase of doom and quake both very well. Doom was genius and great, but often very clunky and ad hoc (take the blockmap). Quake is absolutely beautiful.

[@alefratat4018]

Fabrice Bellard would be in a league of its own because of his ability to produce top notch softwares targeting many different fields.

[@D9270-f8t]

Yes, many people don't know about him but his works are impressive

[@MrHaggyy]

For me the real GOATs are Kerninghan, Ritchie and Stroustrup. They started modern programming languages and made the UNIX Kernel happen. It was quite a buggy mess, but it was necessary to kickstart Microsoft, Apple and Linux. Also the people who build and improve compilers let you feel like you never touched a keyboard just by doing buisness as usual. But they like to hide behind the doors of IBM and Oracle.

[@jcoffin01]

By his own admission, Kernighan is more a documentation writer than a programmer. Bjarne would probably point the credit toward Ole-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard (developers of the first OO language, Simula 67). A list of GOATs probably needs to also include Grace Hopper, John Backus/Peter Naur, John McCarthy, Tony Hoare, Edsger Dijkstra, NIklaus WIrth, Donald Knuth, Ken Thompson, Robert Floyd, Dave Cutler, and quite a few more.

[@nerdError0XF]

9:36 "For a really long time notch was the ONLY person working on Minecraft, until 2014" WTF are you talking about? When Microsoft bought Mojang in 2014, it was already around 40 employers here. You don't even know about Jeb, he had been co-developing Minecraft with Persson since 2010, became the lead designer in 2011, and still works at Mojang (afaik) And you are making "of all time" lists when you can't even google so basic information about the subject you are talking about... fantastic

[@jimmy21584]

Grace Hopper: laid the groundwork for the concept of debugging, and programming as a business activity. Michael Abrash: the programmer that Carmack cribbed from, and hired when he needed the best graphics programmer in the world for Quake.

[@sayantanmazumdar3]

Hopper wrote the first compiler.

[@UltramarinePrimaris]

@@sayantanmazumdar3 No she didn't. Alick Glennie created the first compiled programming language in Manchester. Hopper's design was closer to a Linker/Loader component of a full compiler.

[@sayantanmazumdar3]

​@@UltramarinePrimaris Yeah, but A-0 is now considered a linker/ loader compared to the modern notion of a compiler. Back then it was the foundation of what we now call a compiler and her team actually coined the term 'Compiler'. So technically, Alick Glennie created the first compiled language at VUM and Grace Hopper created the first ever compiler at Remington Rand. If we don't agree with Hopper's invention, then the first unequivocally accepted compiler should be John Backus led IBM team's FORTRAN compiler.

[@oleg4209]

You forgot Bjarne Stroustrup for creating the language everyone is getting depressed at, when working with I just a nanosecond

[@Vortex-qb2se]

The creator of the 2nd most popular chess engine still to this day manages it all by himself and adds as many features as a huge company adds

[@gaaligadu148]

I'm surprised Dennis Ritchie isn't included

[@Yahweh5995]

The list is subjective and bias

[@handsanitizer2457]

Credit should also go to Brian Fox for bash as well. Bash is simply genius with the inclusion of awk built in its a master piece.

[@goawqebt6931]

Bash is so messy tho, it could have been better

[@Blaisem]

Bash was great decades ago. It sucks to use now though. It's a necessary evil to get around a shell, but the sooner you can jump to another language, the better.

[@BlueGrovyle]

@@Blaisem well sure, just like the first Windows would be a joke now.

[@Blaisem]

@@BlueGrovyle It's more an admonishment of how little shell languages have improved.

[@MartinJungblut]

Andy Gavin's name comes to mind, too. He was/is an absolute beast. Crash Bandicoot for PSX had a custom programming language called GOOL, which is essentially a LISP dialect. The compiler was written in Allegro Common LISP and it produced code specifically for the PlayStation's CPU. The later games for PS2 expand on this even further, I think around 98% of Jak and Daxter was written in some variant of GOOL, too.

[@Trupen]

Awesome video :D

[@tusharagarwal5306]

Chris Sawyer should be on this list, dude created an entire game in assembly.

[@fruitfcker5351]

I'd say Neil Konzen. He re-wrote the entire Windows 2.0 and it was good enough to make Apple sue Microsoft for copyright infringement. He joined Microsoft when he was still 16 and fell in-love with the Apple 2 and Macintosh that he's the top guy for those two platforms.

[@zEneeergy]

Dave Cutler is a good mention too, he is the lead architect of the Windows NT.

[@apothecurio]

Shout out to Chris Sawyer for writing the entirety of Roller Coaster Tycoon in assembly.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Why do people love this so much? So you are born to late and compilers now beat assembly. But nostalgia or Asperger’s drives you into it. At least the 32bit assembly code for graphics on PC games was highly optimized to the last cycle. How can you spread this love over boring business Logic?

[@apothecurio]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt love conquers all anyways.

[@LilJollyJoker]

8:40 Minecraft was released in 2009 not 2019.

[@atlantic_love]

He obviously raced to create his stupidly informed video, and didn't even bother reviewing the script he was reading from.

[@uk_an9475]

U fucking idiot, he didn't say that Minecraft was released in 2019

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

How to become a 1000x programmer: 1, receive a calling from God 2, get in your car and run over thle glow in the dark CIA ni(the rest of this comment has been deleted for violating community standards)

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

Forgive him St. Davis, he knows not what he does.

[@derekhettinger451]

terry is that you

[@CarlosCed]

I have seen other videos about legendary programmers, but you have good presence and speak at a good pace. I subscribed. I like that you focused on their humanity. Truly beautiful.

[@WAGMILLC]

Surprised that Woz wasn't on the list

[@Yahweh5995]

It's blatant disrespect but I guess this list is subjective .

[@jcoffin01]

@@Yahweh5995 I'd guess less a display of disrespect and more a display of ignorance.

[@ignskeletons]

Woz directly helped popularize GUI's for consumer level desktops and use of the mouse as a means of controlling the system (idea stolen from Xerox, but popularized by Apple).

[@jcoffin01]

Woz mostly did Apple II stuff, not Lisa or Macintosh. He did implement Apple integer BASIC, an emulator for at 16-bit processor ("SWEET16") included in ROM on Apple II's, and some of the most important parts of Apple DOS (such as "rwts"--read/write track and sector). Also some pretty cool hardware hacks to make things work really well for what they cost.

[@vlad_oga]

Richard stolman and Trry Devis are s tier

[@thevoyager63]

Are these really 1000x developers? Or are they just 10x developers that were in the right place at the right time?

[@jamesbutler80]

I’d agree for notch but some of these guys are certainly 100x

[@Martinit0]

They are 10x developers that also built the right thing, which 100x-ed their developing. Thesis: it's far more important to build the right thing than to build something irrelevant very efficiently.

[@Optimus6128]

I agree with that. Our list of top notch devs are those that happen to be known because they ended up producing software that dominated the world. Also, behind every software or hardware we use, there are few front runners that are in the public eye and possibly hundreds of coders and engineers that nobody knows. For example, who is the inventor of iphone? Did Steve Jobs do any hardware or software engineering? I don't know the names of all the people involved, some of them were better engineers, some of them maybe not so good. I don't have a good metric to classify the best devs anyway. But there is something common in the successful names on the list, besides luck, they were hard working conscientious and focused for a long tiem in a project. Many people did that of course, most failed. Many names I don't even know might have invented brilliant algorithms or tricks, but just happened to also not make into big, so we don't know them. And some of the tricks are not beyond some extremely high iq. You could have average iq and being fascinated and have certain state of mind when programming and come with some of the good ideas yourself I believe.

[@pro.giciel9084]

you forgot about John Carmack is that he open sourced his engine and supported mod wich is why the original Doom is still played today, and other games are made in the GZDoom engine to this day

[@lordantispiral]

Notch was the biggest genius. He changed so many lives, still changing generations and he made something so easy in 2009-2011, in the end being a billionaire

[@Statixize]

Bullshit, he's the only person that does not belong there for many reasons. 1. His product was a clone of another underdeveloped game. 2. There were hundreds similar games made before he made his own 3. It's just a game no matter how popular still just a game not a tool 4. His game could be easily coded by anybody else even at the time of creation (that differentiate him from Carmack, who made state of the art code at the time of creation) 5. He never made anything else, even if he got so much money and so much free time he never made anything else (Carmack - Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Oculus, Linus - Linux, Git, pretty much anybody else worth mentioning works all the time except the lazy Notch)

[@tornado100able]

@@Statixize Do you understand that if anyone could have done the same there's a reason why only Notch, a nobody, did it? VOIALÀ, he's a genius! Seriously, you don't need to create something completely new to be one! You can combine simple ideas and different concepts to make a powerful creation. As much hard it was to Carmack to take the pre existing concept of coding to a whole new level and creating a 3D FPS, it was to Notch to take a lot of simple features and combining them into the biggest game of all time! In the end the numbers speaks for themselves as we can see for Doom and Minecraft.

[@Statixize]

@@tornado100able More bullshit, there's always somebody first to the market with certain concepts and NOT ALL OF THEM are geniuses, here you have perfect example of ordinary guy doing it, for reasons mentioned above, I won't repeat myself, read it again, you had 5 points there.

[@Tornadocholo]

@@Statixize I agree, he was definetely a genius but not a genius programmer.

[@greggonastarev4860]

Bro 1M BTC is $50B. Minecraft came out when I was in highschool, and that was 10 years ago.

[@jeffGordon852]

Linus also created "git". 😍😍😍

[@TheThirdWorldCitizen]

It’s baffling that some “best games ever” listings don’t have doom in the top 5, is ridiculous since it literally changed gaming.

[@flashnfantasy]

"Margaret Hamilton" wrote the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer program, the only code, that after 50 years of reviews is considered to be free of flaws. Was the first person being officially considered to be a software engineer. "Donald E. Knuth", developer of TeX.

[@rogerpatterson3422]

Just another one of those woke air heads that bought that women can be good programmers, even though whenever someone tries to make that claim once you dig deeper you learn it was always a man that wrote the code, even when that man removed bodyparts and started pretending to be the other sex at some point

[@xencraig]

i really liked this video. i appreciate your graceful presentation structure and calm energy. thank you!

[@faadra]

Steve Duda might be a candidate for part 2 of this video. He made Serum, a virtual synthesiser that we can hear in almost any track being produced today

[@fkeyzuwu]

eh, dont get me wrong steve duda definitely was ahead of the curve with serum and its slick design, and influenced a ton of music with it. But for 1, it wasn't a whole new creation, just a more modern take of vst synths. if you had to compare it to anything from the video it would be like minecraft. and 2nd, while he did code a lot of serum, he got a lot of help from people who coded a lot of the other stuff in it, such as the oscilators and filters, ott and maybe more.

[@bobbyfried7478]

I haven't heard that name in decades...you are correct a true pioneer in digital music and audio period. without him. modern sound processing owes him a debt.

[@oreoluwaajuwon2836]

Torvald is a true alpha for that legendary quote!!!

[@4nthonylol]

Carmack is definitely in a league of his own.

[@Redyf]

Really cool video aaron, nice work!

[@francislegaspi2923]

While I might agree with Linus and Satoshi, I don't think the other two meet the S-Tier programming, the other two spot can be replace by Bjarne Stroustrup(creator of C++), Dennis Ritchie(Creator of C), James Gosling(Creator of java) or other programmer with same Caliber. You're a software developer, you know these technologies change the landcape of the programming in General. I guess the other two are your personal bias IMHO

[@tornado100able]

You can't simply ignore the revolution, the popularity and the influence/impacts their creations have caused, specialy considering they did it all alone!

[@RemoG0915]

I think you're discounting Carmack's work because most of it is games but he's renown by many programmers around the world for a reason, his skill is undeniable. Notch though I agree. I get it, Minecraft is a cultural phenomenon but as a programmer he has no business being in this conversation with the rest.

[@joeblo1111]

You have no clue what you're talking about.

[@3amael]

A legendary developer is the one that writes code that is easy to understand and modify with good test coverage and automates as much as possible. A god level developer is someone who helps others become legendary by example and with patience.

[@John5ive]

the only thing I remember from college sociology is "social loafing " which is what you're describing when you say 10 people aren't 10 times more productive than one. each added person allows the group to do slightly less individually so you never get full productivity out of a group

[@mage3690]

That perfectly describes every group project all throughout school, holy shit.

[@vectoralphaSec]

yeah its more productive being alone than being in a group of people.

[@thiagolucas893]

But social loafing means doing less work. I'd say for many it's even the opposite, working in groups gives motivation not to procrastinate. I'd say the main problem is coordination and decision making. As more people getting involved, the proportion of administrative/social work being done instead of actual work increases significantly. It also increases the odds that some people will not be happy with either the direction of the work overall or the work assigned to them.

[@geraldfjord2383]

Social loafing's case studies are generally with strangers and college students who never trained with each other. Practice working with each other matters. In the opposite end, a team of special forces clearing out terrorists like a well oiled machine is a clear counterexamples to social loafing.

[@jirikadlec7796]

Aint no one putting Notch above Linus and where the heck is Terry Davis.

[@2wheels2]

where is terry davis

[@Grinwa]

Classic roller coaster tycoon was made with no engine and no visual editor but with completely raw code in 19s and had 0 bugs since it's released over 13 years ago and was made by single man who is not a 1000x dev but a god tier dev

[@UnkownUnkown01]

If you hear about notch's story it's actually sad, and from what I know he never said anything wrong on Twitter, did he? "It's okay to be white" Yeah, it is? So what? What's wrong about that? He never said it was wrong to be black

[@nt44455]

1 million bitcoin is worth $60 Billion.

[@businessparis9364]

you would crash the market if you try to sell that lol

[@tramadoljanne123]

@@businessparis9364 besides the point, he said 5 billion in the video (3 years late)

[@amnesiac-original]

1. Terry Davis 2. Tarn Adams 3. Markus Persson ... ... nothing ... 4. the rest

[@melodyogonna]

Also, you didn't mention Chris Lattner. Chris made LLVM, Clang, Swift, and MLIR. An absolute legend in compiler and language design.

[@jacobzimmerman3492]

I guess, but idk how he compares to real legends of compilers language design like Frances Allen, McCarthy, Hindley, Milner, Steele, Sussman, Kay. It's a question of software legends vs computer science legends. I definitely idolize the latter more, of course Lattner is super inspiring as well.

[@Mirza_Media]

Very motivational! Thanks Aaron!

[@vatsalgoyal9576]

Apart from the sheer brilliance, we owe our digital freedom to this man linus.

[@devfren]

rollercoaster tycoon. 1 man coded it in assembly (FREAKING ASSEMBLY WTF) so it is insanely optimised and nearly a perfect game IMO Chris Sawyer deserves to be on this list

[@dr.palsonp.h.d815]

yes

[@meanmole3212]

Settlers 1 is more impressive to me, also written in assembly by a one man.

[@Gaxi2]

How can you forget the legend Dennis Ritchie? How????????

[@tinnick]

Ken Thompson is #1 in my list. The goat that created Unix in 3 weeks 😅

[@NoName-md6fd]

Id software first games before Wolf3D were 2D platformers (Commander Keen). but on PC. And it's important to note that at the time consoles were still better for run and jump games than PC. Carmack just figured out that he didn't needed to redraw tiles that were going to be in the next frame, saving memory. The influence of net play, deathmatch, mapping and releasing every engine source code basically led to the start of e-sports and game designer careers. And even if Id tech isn't the standard anymore, their only competitor was Unreal tournament, which lead to the unreal engine still used today as a standard.

[@xxyz9819]

A list without Terry A Davis. 0/10.

[@alligator6985]

1. Ken Thompson - Dennis Richie - Linus Torvalds

[@TrophyGuide101]

I think this video would be cool to expand on by looking at the most creative snippets of code these people wrote. Like the fast inverse square root code in IDs FPS games (Although I'm not sure Carmack originally created this, but it's just an example)

[@atlantic_love]

You forgot the creator of C++.

[@hiddensense4459]

Didn't watch no Terry A. Davis your list is invalid.

[@honorous4840]

Holy... If these are the most legendary programmers according to you, you must know very little of programming history and programming in general.

[@mage3690]

Minecraft is objectively the most popular game of all time, as defined by number of downloads. It surpassed Tetris somewhere between 2018-20 (I can't find a historical list without spending way too much time searching for random articles), and currently has almost double the number of downloads as the number 2 spot, occupied by GTA V, which passed Tetris somewhere between 2020-22 in response to the pandemic creating/massively expanding a market for multiplayer role-playing games, and GTA V is best suited for that, although it isn't particularly good TBH.

[@Ashwin-ksr]

Minecraft has its flaws but gta at this point is just predatory. As someone who likes story driven games more than absolute sandbox games, Minecraft is better 90% of time compared to GTA V.

[@ZverseZ]

I think pac man is more popular

[@mage3690]

@@ZverseZ I'm sure it was at one point, I'm also sure it hasn't been the best-selling videogame for at least a few decades now.

[@mage3690]

@@Ashwin-ksr yeah. The only reason GTA V is selling as well as it is is because it provides a semi-realistic urban environment for role-playing. As good as Minecraft is, and as fantastic as mods can make it, they haven't really tapped into the GTA V market in any meaningful way. That's mostly down to the way environment shapes storytelling: you look at Minecraft and want to tell a survival story, or a building story. You look at GTA V, you want to tell a story about the various factions that control the urban landscape: gangs, cops, corporations, militants, etc.

[@ZverseZ]

@@mage3690 another good rival is Mario

[@deviandrianto]

John Carmack and Linus Torvalds are my favorite programer

[@siphillis]

Notch's code quality on the original, Java-version of Minecraft has been justifiably criticized, and led to the creation of a ground-up rewrite called "Bedrock Edition". Moreover, the original concept was lifted from "Infiniminer", an open-source project created by Zach Barth.

[@ZellieOwO]

for the actual game experience, bedrock edition isn't amazing though

[@siphillis]

@@ZellieOwO Sure, but if Notch had decided to use an unmanaged language like C++ in the first, which Bedrock currently uses, then they could've avoided fragmented codebases and not dealt with the performance and memory issues the Java Edition has. The reason he didn't? He was well-versed in Java and didn't feel like learning another language at the time. That doesn't sound like a legendary programmer to me. As for who should take his spot: Satoru Iwata was so skilled with algorithms that when the Pokémon Company came to him with a compression problem the entire dev team could not solve, he was not only able produced a solution by himself within days, it worked several orders of magnitude better than they needed.

[@ZellieOwO]

@@siphillis I agree, and im sure there are plenty of ways to implement the same features that the bedrock version uses the same stuff the java one does; it's just so much community content has surrounded java, and while people may criticise someone for their decisions on how they do things; you can't deny the amount that notch has profited from the fact. everything has its pros and cons. As for pokemon that's amazing I cant even figure out how to make a nickname command in hikari lol

[@wgnd1614]

@@siphillis bro... are you serious? bro acting like notch committed a crime lmao he used java (thank god) and the game turned out amazing so who gives a fuck

[@siphillis]

@@wgnd1614 I still don't think that grants him a strong case as an all-time great programmer. Someone like Satoru Iwata, Tim Sweeney, or Ken Silverman all showed consistently superior coding abilities, and that's just among game developers.

[@kurushimee]

0:14 never heard about it before but now it makes sense! Noticed that myself working on game jams, I'm ten times as productive when I'm working on a game solo compared to working in a team.

[@nephis_2006]

Brian Kernighan --> C James Gosling --> Java (Whether you like it or not, the language is/was pretty damn popular) Bjarne Stroustrup --> c++ Guido van Rossum --> Python

[@_____case]

Brian Kernighan did not create C, Dennis Ritchie did.

[@joeblo1111]

Java, C++, and Python are all terrible languages.

[@b199er]

Elite by David Braben. What's interesting is that none of these legendary programmers started out with the traditional graduate-corporate work place route. This is probably why there are still few non-Western programmers that have occupied this sphere. This could also be why we have problems across a whole swathe of industries trying to find the next Issac Newton, Da Vinci, or Einstein.

[@rohan1765]

If Linus torvalds is 1000x development then mathematically speaking I'm 0.0000001x or let's be safe 0.0000000x developer 🙂

[@StupidusMaximusTheFirst]

This has to be the most unfairly incomplete list ever.

[@ravenkrofft]

This list is kind of disappointing to be honest.

[@saschaschneider9157]

When I saw the Doom logo I instantly thought of John Carmack. His inverse square root algorithm blew my mind. This thing is absolutely next level. I mean, I'm glad I even understand how it works, let alone pull off something like that myself. So yeah 1000x Developer is the right term for people like him.

[@dom8429]

dude I wish I could be 1/1000th as productive everyday as one of these people. but i am not even close. they are more than 1000x compared to me, more like a million x or more.

[@PaulnJenna]

So change that mindset then

[@jonas1ara]

Miguel de Icaza - Creator of Mono Compiler and GNOME project

[@remixisthis]

No Fabrice Bellard!? Dude created QEmu, FFMPEG, 5g firmware, his own lightweight JS and OpenGL engines, etc. Bjarne Sourstrop? Djikstra? Steve Wozniak? Nasir Gibeli? Coded original FF games and a 3D NES game in assembler Chris Sawyer wrote Roller Coaster Tycoon in assembler

[@Vensae]

just don't let the other developers know that there are actually 10 developers rather than just two

[@alirezaalavi1504]

Linus created linux and git and probably some other amazing things that I'm not aware of but just imagining one person created linux AND git is craaaazy.

[@bobbyfried7478]

Linus created the kernel Stallman brought the GNU. bang! desktop Linux.