jasens: Old Computer Programmers Who Can Still Hack It

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Old Computer Programmers Who Can Still Hack It

richard stallman

There are so many people responsible for pushing computing forward when it was just a fledgling branch of math and science.

With help from the brilliant minds of people like Richard Stallman, James Gosling, and Bill Atkinson, computing slowly but surely became a big deal.

Here are some of our favorite programmers who have been around since the early days and aren't content to sit on their hands, keeping busy with computers to this very day.

Richard Stallman

THEN: He went to work as a programmer at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971 after sailing through a famously difficult Harvard class, Math 55. He published numerous papers on programming and helped develop important software like TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp Machine Operating System,

NOW: Stallman is an outspoken activist who maintains that software should be free. He founded and maintains the GNU project, a collaborative effort to create "a sufficient body of free software [...] to get along without any software that is not free."

Andy Hertzfeld

THEN: Hertzfeld starting developing his own software for the Apple II in 1978. Apple was so impressed that they hired him. He wrote system software and was primary architect of the Macintosh Operating System.

NOW: He designed the Google+ Circles user interface. Talk about staying current!