The question: Who is the smartest software engineer? It’s hard to pick just one answer, but a few standouts come to mind: Linus Torvalds, Ken Thompson, James Gosling, and Tim Berners-Lee. What is common among these four innovators? In general, software engineers have a high opinion of their own intelligence. In fact, 95% of them believe they are the best employees in their company. Eighty-nine percent of them believe they are essential to the company and will make a revolution in the economy over the next five years.
Linus Torvalds
One of the world’s most influential software engineers, Linus Torvalds, is a Finnish-American computer scientist and creator of the Linux operating system. In addition to creating Linux, he invented Git, a version control system that has since become a popular alternative to Microsoft’s VS Code. His achievements in the computer industry have earned him the Millennium Technology Prize and the Lovelace Medal from the British Computer Society.
Linux, the operating system that runs millions of computers, was created by Torvalds while a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The success of Linux led to the development of countless other operating systems and gadgets, including the iPod, iPad, and iPhone. In this interview, Torvalds discusses what has happened in the last quarter century and where he sees the technology going in the next 25 years.
James Gosling
According to Forbes, Canadian computer Onbench.io scientist Dr. James Gosling is the smartest software engineer ever. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and is widely regarded as the ‘Father of Java’. He is a pioneer of the Java programming language and helped create the mainframe for it. Gosling was also responsible for creating a number of software applications, including the compiler and virtual machine. He also made contributions to NeWS and Gosling Emacs, and was named a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Engineering.
As a software developer at Sun Microsystems, he invented the Java programming language. Later, he developed a security framework that has stood the test of time. Today, his security framework is used to design and create marine robots that can cross oceans to collect weather data or perform research projects. And because his ideas were so revolutionary, they’ve been used by millions of software developers and engineers.
Tim Berners-Lee
If there’s one person in the world who has invented the Internet, it is Tim Berners-Lee. Born in London, Tim was raised by computer pioneers. His parents developed the first commercial stored-program electronic computer. He was raised on stories of bits and processors and dreamed of computers one day functioning like the brain. The rest is history. His breakthroughs in this field have revolutionized the way we live and work.
As a student at Oxford University in the 1970s, Tim Berners-Lee began to build computers from scratch. His parents, both computer scientists, were part of the team that developed the first commercial electronic computer. The company sold the computer to companies such as Ferranti Ltd. Afterwards, Tim Berners-Lee worked as a programmer for several companies and eventually landed a consulting job at CERN near Geneva. There, he worked on a program that would allow nuclear scientists to share data with one another. The name of the program came from a Victorian-era domestic handbook.
Ken Thompson
If you’re wondering whether or not Ken Thompson is the smartest software engineer, it’s important to know his background and accomplishments. As a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Thompson has received many honors, including the ACM Turing Award and the Computer Pioneer Award. He also co-authored the Go programming language and is the co-inventor of C. A list of Thompson’s achievements is extensive.
Conclusion
The creator of UNIX and the first text editor, B-programming language, and ed (text editor), Thompson co-developed the operating system, which eventually became the lingua franca of computing. He received the A.M. Turing Award in 1983 and has been named a fellow of the Computer History Museum. He also co-founded the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.
