Top 10 Most Influential Software Programmers

10. Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, computer programmer, inventor and philanthropist.
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9. James Gosling, Java Creator
James Arthur Gosling, OC is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.
8. Richard Stallman, GNU Project creator
Richard Matthew Stallman, often known by his initials, RMS, is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer.
7. Bjarne Stroustrup, C++ creator
Bjarne Stroustrup is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the creation and development of the widely used C++ programming language.
6. Brian Wilson Kernighan, UNIX co-creator
Brian Wilson Kernighan is a Canadian computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed to the development of Unix. He is also coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages.
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5. Tim Berners-Lee, HTML and world wide web inventor
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS, also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.
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4. Ken Thompson, UNIX co-creator
Kenneth Thompson, commonly referred to as ken in hacker circles, is an American pioneer of computer science. Having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career, Thompson designed and implemented the original Unix operating system.
Image Source: http://www.japanprize.jp/data/photos2011/20110125_Press_Conference/images/002_Dr_Thompson_JPG.jpg
3. Donald Knuth, Father of the analysis of algorithms
Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming
2. Linus Torvalds, Linux Kernel Creator
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish American software engineer, who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator.
1. Dennis Ritchie, C programming language creator
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era". He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system.
Image Source: http://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/honoring-the-life-of-dennis-ritchie-unix-co-creator-and-father-of-c