The Minds Behind Modern Computing

Ranked list by Nia Okafor · 10 items · 0 likes

Every app on your phone sits on the shoulders of these people. Say thank you.

1. Alan Turing Person

   Asked what a machine could think about, and set the course for the whole field.

2. Ada Lovelace Person

   Saw the poetry in machines long before they existed. A true visionary.

3. Grace Hopper Person

   Made programming friendlier for everyone. Practical, funny and ahead of her time.

4. Tim Berners-Lee Person

   Gave us the web and a reason to keep it open.

5. Charles Babbage Person

   Dreamed up engines made of gears that were far ahead of their moment.

6. Claude Shannon Person

   Turned messages into bits, quietly shaping every call and file we send.

7. John von Neumann Person

   A mind that jumped across fields. His fingerprints are on how computers are organised.

8. Margaret Hamilton Person

   Careful, rigorous software thinking that helped people reach the Moon.

9. Donald Knuth Person

   A lifetime spent on the art of programming. I admire the patience.

10. Dennis M. Ritchie Person

    Quietly built tools that half the software world still relies on.

Rank it yourself

Lystic