Tell me more ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 11 down vote favorite
1

Possible Duplicate:
What are the big contemporary names in the programming field?

I am sorry if it is a duplicate questions or is useless. I want to compile a list of influential people in our industry who can be termed as "opinionated" and thought leaders. There are basically two characteristics that I'm referring to here:

  1. The person has introduced new concepts/terminology/trends or talked about existing ones in thought provoking way.
  2. Majority or part of the writings are available online.

Some of the people who I think as thought leaders are as under:

  1. Martin Fowler Known for domain specific languages, Active Record, IoC.
  2. Joel Spolsky known for his 12 point Joel test, Law of Leaky abstractions.
  3. Kent Beck known for XP.
  4. Paul Graham.

Any other names and links?

share|improve this question
2  
Only living people or would for example Alan Turing be on the list? Only IT people or maybe mathematicians who do work strongly related to IT? – thorsten müller Jun 23 '11 at 19:10

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jun 23 '11 at 18:58

marked as duplicate by Wayne M, back2dos, FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, Anna Lear♦ Jun 23 '11 at 20:28

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

9 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I would add scottgu and wait for negative votes

share|improve this answer
Very much agree with Scott Gu, but then again I am mainly a MS stack developer. – Adam Crossland Jun 23 '11 at 20:14
up vote 2 down vote

Dave Hoover - Apprenticeship @redsquirrel

Corey Haines - Software Craftsmanship @coreyhaines

Chad Fowler - Pragmatic Practice @chadfowler

share|improve this answer
up vote 3 down vote

Erik Meijer. Very opinionated, an entertaining speaker, and influential in the world of language design, particularly in purely functional languages. Check out his videos on Channel 9.

share|improve this answer
up vote 4 down vote
  • Martin Fowler
  • Kent Beck
  • Robert Martin
  • Linus Torvalds
  • Pragmatic programmers (Andy and Dave)
share|improve this answer
up vote 11 down vote

The classics seem underrepresented so far.

  1. Edsger Dijkstra, many algorithms, essays, etc. Among other things, the author of Go To Statement Considered Harmful.
  2. Donald Knuth, need I say anything more?
  3. Steve McConnell, authors of books such as Code Complete, Rapid Development and Software Estimation.
  4. Fred Brooks, the author of The Mythical Man-Month.
  5. Vint Cerf, helped create the internet.
share|improve this answer
3  
Excellent candidates! In the spirit of your answer, I would suggest Tony (aka C. A. R.) Hoare, inventor of the QuickSort algorithm in particular and many other contributions to computer science. His 1980 Turing Award lecture, The Emperor's Old Clothes, is one of my top-ten most-influential documents. – Adam Crossland Jun 23 '11 at 19:36
+1 for Donald Knuth – BrokenGlass Jun 23 '11 at 19:47
1  
I'm almost tempted to downvote -- trying to put Steve McConnell in he same class as the others you've mentioned is clearly just wrong. He seems to be all right, but not even close to the likes of Knuth, Brooks, or Dijkstra. – Jerry Coffin Jun 23 '11 at 21:40
up vote 2 down vote

adding these guys:

  • Greg Young. IL/Contracts/CQRS/ES/DDD (codebetter.com new Addison Westley book in Nov)
  • Scott Bellware. BDD/Community/Activism/Practices
  • Eric Evans DDD
  • Michael Feathers Refactoring/TDD/Languages
  • Oren Eini (ayende.com) ORM/NoSQL/OSS/productivity king
  • Jeremy Miller .NET/patterns/AAT
  • Rob Conery polyglot

and who can forget

  • Linus Torvalds

disagree on Spolsky being here at all

share|improve this answer
3  
Plus 1, including comment abaout Spolsky. – Peter Ritchie Jun 23 '11 at 19:33
+1 for Michael Feathers – Matthew Rodatus Jun 23 '11 at 20:14
up vote 9 down vote
  1. Robert C. Martin, a.k.a. Uncle Bob; great explanations of the theory behind cohesion vs. coupling
  2. Pragmatic Programmers, Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas; how to be a better programmer
  3. Gerald M. Weinberg; how to be a better person (/consultant)
share|improve this answer
2  
+1 for Uncle Bob – BrokenGlass Jun 23 '11 at 19:48
up vote 6 down vote

Linus Torvalds -- Linux, Git, the practice of large-scale open source development generally

Richard Stallman -- GNU, Emacs, the philosophy of open source development

David Heinemeier Hansson -- Ruby on Rails, 37 Signals-style design and work-style philosophies. Also, opinionated.

share|improve this answer
up vote -2 down vote

[Tim O'Reilly][1] Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly books - He's amazing is so is his feed.

[Michael Brevig][2] #shameless plug -- PHP Developer, Cyclist, Freemason and opinion generated ranter

share|improve this answer
1  
So where's your blog kinda thing? – Mohsin Hijazee Jun 23 '11 at 19:09
1  
-1 for the "shameless plug". The fact it is your single answer on Programmers.SE (at least as I write this) make it worse. – Vitor Braga Jun 23 '11 at 20:07

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.