And lo on Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:29:28 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Fa3ien <fab### [at] yourshoesskynetbe> wrote:
>> I have a biography of Bill Gates waiting on my bookshelf to be read :-)
>
>   I bet Gates is not such an evil person as most people want to depict
> him. While he does have some opinions which grinds the gears of some
> people (especially open source software advocates), I don't remember
> ever hearing anything nearly as bad as for example from Steve Ballmer
> (who, for all I know, is psychotic).
>
>   If I'm not mistaken, Gates was a 70's - early 80's programming nerd
> who had some talent and some business ideas, and who, along with a few
> others, won the jackpot with his company, by being in the right place at
> the right time (and, perhaps, sometimes using some slightly dubious  
> tactics).
> I really don't know how much he advocates the "you will be assimilated,
> OSS is a cancer" ideology Ballmer does. Perhaps he just silently  
> concedes,
> while Ballmer does all the antics.
>
>   Speaking of programmer nerds, there's one person in that field who
> I admire: John Carmack.
>
>   How many famous programmers (pure programmers, not people who are for
> example computing scientists and who do some programming along the way)
> can you remember? I can only list two right now: John Romero and John
> Carmack. From those two the former is remembered only by his fiascos
> with Ion Storm, while the latter is well known from his successes at ID.

Warren Spector?

>   The vast majority of computer programmers are more or less anonymous.
> You never hear, for example, *who* was the lead programmer of the team
> who developed, let's say, the Source engine or the Unreal engine. You
> just hear the company which developed it. Carmack is rather unique in
> this regard, as he is quite well known for his role in the ongoing
> development of the doom/quake engines. Not many programmers reach that
> level of celebrity.

But as you mention that's not always a good thing, if you take the recent  
example of Jade Raymond as a case in point.
http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2007/07/how-to-identify-jade-raymond-assassins.html

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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