Warp wrote:
>   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? 

Robert Morris? :-)

Met him once, interviewing him for a job. Seemed like he grew up. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> Let's quote John Donne, fellow brothers: "No man is an island, 

... but some have nice peninsulas.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 2) Some ten years ago we wanted to throw a big party and a son of a 
> colleague of ours proposed to organize the music. He had played DJ at 
> many (school)parties, was interested in various kinds of music, had some 
> equipment and could easily arrange for the rest. We talked a bit to him 
> while organizing the party. It turned out that he had never heard of the 
> Beatles (he was about 17 years old at that time). That resulted in the 
> same lower jaw movement as your apparent unfamiliarity with e.g. 
> stallman, jobs and brown.

  I can't even imagine how someone who listens and plays music as a hobby
(I assume for several years) has never heard of a music group which
basically every westerner and the majority of the rest of the world has
heard about.

  OTOH, it could be explained by really bad memory. There are those people...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> 2) Some ten years ago we wanted to throw a big party and a son of a 
>> colleague of ours proposed to organize the music. He had played DJ at 
>> many (school)parties, was interested in various kinds of music, had some 
>> equipment and could easily arrange for the rest. We talked a bit to him 
>> while organizing the party. It turned out that he had never heard of the 
>> Beatles (he was about 17 years old at that time). That resulted in the 
>> same lower jaw movement as your apparent unfamiliarity with e.g. 
>> stallman, jobs and brown.
> 
>   I can't even imagine how someone who listens and plays music as a hobby
> (I assume for several years) has never heard of a music group which
> basically every westerner and the majority of the rest of the world has
> heard about.
Indeed, so at first we assumed he was kidding. He wasn't.
> 
>   OTOH, it could be explained by really bad memory. There are those people...
> 
No not that either. My best guess was and is that he listened to and 
played music without ever realizing that contemporary music is 
influenced by and a reaction to what was before. Indeed you can listen 
to the radio and appreciate it here and now (like Andy does with 
computers) but to understand what is going on, how they did it and why 
you need some historical perspective. Just reading a magazine now and 
then would suffice for that. Or so I though until I met this guy. Andy 
might give another part of the explanation. Even if you read about music 
you can skip the names of all those medieval musicians (like Bach, 
Presley and Beatles), because they are surely not relevant for what is 
going on now.

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> 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.

I think nowadays most projects tend to be much bigger so it's not usual that 
one person gets well-known for a project.  In the old days, when one guy 
alone could write or port an entire best-selling game, of course he will get 
recognition.

I can only think of two programmers that I know:

Geoff Crammond.  He wrote the first ever racing game I played frequently 
(Revs on the BBC), and then went on to write the Grand Prix series for the 
PC.

Eddie Edwards ported some FPS games to the Acorn, I remember reading some 
really good articles and interviews.

If you look on some of the game developer websites they often have 
interviews with some of the core programmers from certain well-known 
projects.  Usually very interesting reading.

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On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:24:14 -0800, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Gilles Tran wrote:
>> Let's quote John Donne, fellow brothers: "No man is an island, 
>
>... but some have nice peninsulas.


That's just wrong.  :-p

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You know POV-Ray. Do you know who Chris Cason is?

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On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:31:06 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Surely you don't even need to know what a computer is to have heard of
> the richest man on Earth.

Do you know who Mukesh Ambani is?

How about Carlos Slim Helu?

Warren Buffett?

Jim

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