MIT BBS said that one of the questions of Microsoft's telephone interview is“ Who do you think is the best coder,and why? ”。 I think it's very interesting. Let's join in the fun. The ranking is in no particular order.
Bill Joy , Predecessor Sun The chief scientist of Berkeley The earliest version of BSD 。 He's still vi And csh Author of. of course, Csh Programming Considered Harmful It's another topic of music. It is said that he wanted to see if he could write an operating system, so he wrote his own in three days Unix, That is BSD The predecessor of. Of course, it's legendary, but it shows his power. Another legend is that, one thousand nine hundred and eighty At the beginning of the year, DARPA Let BBN On Berkley Unix Plus BBN Developed TCP/IP Code. But he was still a graduate student B Uncle was angry and refused to take BBNTCP/IP Join BSD Because he thinks BBN Of TCP/IP Poor writing. therefore B Uncle made a move, but it was a shot in the throat, and he soon wrote a high-performance Berkeley version TCP/IP 。 At that time BBN And DARPA Signed a huge contract to develop TCP/IP Stack Who knows their code is not as good as that of a graduate student. So they held a meeting. Only then B Uncle, wear one T-shirt Appear in the conference room ( I was wearing T-shirt Not like now, it's still quite casual ) 。 Only see BBN Q: How did you write it? and B Uncle A: Simple. You can read the protocol and then program. What makes me faint most is that, B After graduating from master's degree, Uncle decided to develop in the industry, so he arrived at the place where there was only one office at that time Sun, Then he put Sparc Design makes music... Such a tough and soft man can't say without admiration. according to Bill Joy My colleague said that in general B Uncle always reads a pile of magazines carelessly. But often at the key points, B Uncle made a speech, hit the nail on the head, put forward a beautiful idea, and let colleagues completely collapse. By the way, he still Java Spec And JINI One of the main authors of.
John Carmack ， ID Software Of founder And Lead Programmer 。 I chatted with a senior brother who engaged in graphics last month, but he didn't know John Carmack, It also made me dizzy. But perhaps there is a gap between research and actual combat. Anyone who likes the first person shooting game must know J Brother. ninety At the beginning of the decade, as long as PC When a small animation can amaze people, J My brother launched the rock shattering Castle Wolfstein, And then keep working hard, doom, doomII, Quake... Every time 3-D Technology pushed to the limit. J My brother's resume says that his specialty is "Exhaust 3-D technology" I can't deceive you. do J People like my brother are very happy, because every major graphic card manufacturer will send him “ Tribute " Otherwise, if his game does not support which card, which card will basically die. original MS Of Direct3D We also have to listen to his opinions and have revised a lot API 。 of course, J My brother programmed everyday for ten years before marriage fourteen Hours or more is beyond the reach of ordinary people. by the way, J Brother, senior high school, four professions ( ？ ) , can be said to be self-taught. However, anyone who wants to use this example to defend his/her poor learning is totally wrong. That Leonardo Da Vinci It's about self-study ( People are illegitimate and cannot go to school ) 。 There is still a difference between ordinary people and geniuses. By the way, we are actually called “ Da Fenqi ” Is quite wrong, because Vinci Is a place name, and Da Vinci Is from Vinci The meaning of the person who came. let me put it another way, Leonardo Da Vinci It is “ From Vinci Coming Leonardo” Means. Call someone else “Da Vinci” I don't know what music is. Well, it's too far. Stop.
David Cutler ， VMS And Windows NT The chief designer of kernel Developer. At the beginning, he and his staff put a basic functional bootable kernel Write it down and say: “who can't write an OS in a week?" , which is also said with high spirit. By the way, D Grandpa arrives NT3.5 When, manage one thousand and five hundred Developers, who also do design and programming coder It's true.
D Grandfather was born with a hot temper. When arguing with others, he likes to pound the table with both hands to strengthen his momentum. Daily conversation fuck Do not leave the mouth. When interviewing the secretary, he must ask: "what do you think of the word 'fuck'?" Let countless beautiful women return in a flash. Finally one day, an equally popular woman blurted out in the face of this problem: "That's my favoriteword" 。 So she was admitted to Le D Grandpa worked until NT3.5 Publish.
Don Knuth 。 Grandpa Gao doesn't need me to say much. He who learns programming without knowing it is like he who learns physics without knowing Newton, mathematics without knowing Euler, music without knowing Mozart Delphi I don't know Anders Hejlsberg , or learn Linux I don't know Linus Torvalds The same, unforgivable ah. In order to make the article complete, let's make a few more comments. Grandpa Gao started writing all kinds of strange compilers for companies when he was an undergraduate to earn extra money. He charged $1000 or $2000 when he sold it to others, and those companies took it code After being processed and sold, it will cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. But I haven't seen Grandpa Gao unhappy, the scholar said naturally. Think about that sixty At the beginning of the decade, Grandpa Gao wrote many compilers, so he came up with a Attribute Grammar and LR(k) , greatly benefit future generations. As for Grandpa Gao CalTech Programming contest for ( Yes Alan Kay It is attended by many experts ) Always first, written Tex To eighty-six In code freeze , with 2^n Cent rewards and so on are familiar, and I don't rap.
By the way, Mr. Gao is an undisputed master of writing. He gave Concrete Mathematics The preface written is sonorous and can be regarded as a model of preface. His technical articles are also unique. His style of writing is meticulous, his explanations are precise, and he is not pedantic and does not lose his lightness. Remember reading a few years ago Concrete Mathemathics , laughing from time to time, which made my mother extremely depressed and felt that I nerdy Home is hopeless. In fact, Zi is not a fish. An knows the happiness of fish, and I don't know that it is all grandpa Gao's credit. When it comes to writing masters, we have to mention Stephen A. Cook 。 His article was highly recommended by our writing teacher that year, which is known as a sample of elegant style. Grandpa Ku has silver hair and a tall stature. He always has a modest smile, which is quite immortal. It just matches his immortal prose.
Grandpa Gao is actually a pioneer of the open source movement. Although he doesn't have an elephant Richard Stallman So he traveled in all directions, but he donated many works, which can be seen on the Internet, such as the famous Mathematical Writing ， MMIXWare ， The Tex Book Wait, not to mention enough to make him immortal Tex happy.
Ken Thompson ， C Language predecessor B The author of the language, Unix One of the inventors of ( The other is Dennis M. Riche Boss, respected as DMR) ， Belle( A powerful chess program ) One of the authors of , Operating system Plan 9 Primary author of ( The other is Daniel Rob Pike, Not long ago was google Dig it away ) 。 Ken Grandpa is also an epoch-making figure in computer history. one thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine Year or
In the prehistoric era of computer, ordinary people believed that only the mainframe could run a common operating system, while the minicomputer could only run at a high altitude. As for writing the operating system in a high-level language, it is even more laughable. Ken Grandpa was certainly not in the pool, so he and DMR Anger, in one thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine Year to one thousand nine hundred and seventy Intermediary assembly in PDP-7 It is written on UNIX The first version of. They didn't know it UNIX Thus the legend began. Ken Grandpa is one thousand nine hundred and seventy-one The year again Unix Use C Rewrite, so C After twenty I don't know how many heroes have achieved their dreams and glory.
Ken Grandpa also had a good story: loaded UNIX Of PDP-11 First installed on Bell Lab For daily use. Soon everyone found out Ken Grandpa can always access their account and get the highest authority. Bell Lab Of course, the scientists here are very depressed. So some experts got angry and jumped out to analyze UNIX Code, find the backdoor, modify the code, and recompile the entire UNIX 。 Just because everyone thinks “ The world is clean ” When they found Ken Grandpa still easily got their account permissions, puzzled, had to continue depressed. Who knows this depression fourteen Until Ken Grandpa explained why. Original, code
There is a back door, but the back door is not there Unix Code, while compiling Unix Coded C In the compiler. every time C Compiler compilation UNIX The backdoor code is automatically generated. And the whole Bell Lab People who use Ken Grandpa's C Compiler.
Rob Pike , AT&T Bell Lab Front Member of Technical Staff , now google Study the operating system. Uncle Luo is Unix The pioneer of Bell Laboratories Ken Thompson And Dennis M. Ritche Development Unix The fierce man, UTF-8 Designer of. He's still an American celebrity DavidLetterman He showed a small face on the evening program of, with a simple face, helping a fat man to brag and play tricks. What I admire most is that Uncle Luo is still one thousand nine hundred and eighty A silver medalist in archery at the 2008 Olympic Games. He is also a very good amateur astronomer. His Gamma ray telescope was almost NASA It is used in the space shuttle. He is still two classics The Unix Programming Environment And The Practice of Programming One of the authors of. If beginners want to improve their programming, they should read these two books. They all have Chinese versions. Rob also wrote Unix The first bitmap based window system blit Author of the terminal. Of course, Rob is still known as an innovative operating system, Plan9 , the main author of. Unfortunately, Plan9 It didn't attract much attention. Uncle Luo was so angry that he wrote an inspiring article Systems Software Research is Irrelevant , denounce the malady of the current system development of being lazy and complacent. Although this article was written by Rob with anger and extreme words, it did reveal the frustration of system development: the development cycle is getting longer and longer, the cost is getting higher and higher, users are unified to a few systems, and as a result, more and more activities are measurement and repair, while real innovation is getting less and less.
When Uncle Luo was extremely depressed, google Visit the door to seek talents and enjoy yourself. If there is still a Volkswagen company that is sparing no effort to push the system development to the extreme, that is google Le. look around google We will know the results of. Distributed file system with super fault tolerance and load balancing capability GFS( Now you can use 100,000 Taiwan is cheap PC The system that sets up a huge distributed system and manages it efficiently and cheaply is not Doha ) , large-scale machine learning system ( Spelling check, advertisement matching, pinyin search... All of them are awesome ) , not to mention processing various types of massive parallel computing google Service. Rob On System Software Research is Irrelevant Li said that no one cares about the cutting-edge achievements of system research anymore. Unexpectedly, he was wrong google Care. google The network always tries to absorb the latest achievements of system research after a large number of achievements. presumably Rob Pike On google Very happy. Wish him a better system.
Dennis M. Ritchie , Since Ken Thompson It's my idol, which is called by the newsgroup DMR Of Dennis M.Ritchie Of course. After all, they created UNIX , and Dennis Almost alone C To enlarge ( Of course, C The predecessor of B , and B Yes Ken Thompson Made with one hand ) 。 Two one thousand nine hundred and eighty-three Sharing Turing Award in ( It was the only couple, but Alan Kay Because SmallTalk Winning a prize makes it the only joy ) It is not easy for a person to make an excellent system in his life, DMR Of C And UNIX Enduring Prosperity thirty Since, DMR This life can be said without regret.
D Grandpa also has a family background: his father is AT&T Bell Labs has worked all his life and has made great achievements in circuit design. He has also published an influential book The Design of Switching Circuits It is said that there are unique discussions on exchange theory and logic design. of course, D Grandpa and his father were people of different times: his father's research was shaped before the invention of the transistor, and D Grandpa can't play without transistors. :-D
Don't look D Grandpa got it C In fact, his favorite programming language is Alef , on Plan9 It supports parallel programming. Alef Syntax and C Similar, but the data type and execution mode are the same as C It's very different. Speaking of language, D Grandpa has a very pertinent suggestion for later generations: develop your own language for the purpose of learning, and don't expect it to be accepted by everyone. This suggestion is not only useful for language development, but also applicable to the development of other large-scale systems. Nothing else, DMR Later, he led his team in one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five Year and one thousand nine hundred and ninety-six Separately launched Plan9 And Inferno How many people know about the operating system? In fact, D Grandpa never thought about it C Will become popular in the world. He developed C The original intention and Eric S. Raymond On Cathedral and Bazaar As stated in, it is to eliminate your dissatisfaction with existing tools. who knows D Grandpa cut the willow tree unintentionally, C It is so popular among many programmers that even D Grandpa himself was puzzled. At one time
In interview D Grandpa said maybe that's because C The degree of abstraction of , And easy to implement. of course C At one time Unix The common language on is also the reason. But anyway, D Grandpa's outstanding aesthetic awareness of programming language has been established C The foundation of wide spread.
Finally, gossip. D Grandpa's hobbies and NBA Daniel Karl Malone Same: drive a truck. however D Grandpa prefers driving NASCAR , and KM I love Big Mac alone. J D Grandpa claimed that he didn't have any idols in his heart. If he had to say one thing, it would be Ken Thompson Has. Now? Ken Grandpa retired and went to be an airplane coach, and D Grandpa became the head of the system development department of Bell Laboratories and was busy writing checks all day. They work together twenty In, history was created repeatedly. This fascinating story will keep us happy for a long time.
P.S., Many people think Brian W. Kernighan Yes C Author of. actually BWK Just wrote the classic K&R C 。 according to D Grandpa said, he, Ken, And Kernighan Of the three, Kernighan He is the best at writing articles, followed by Ken Write least; But when it comes to programming, Ken Grandpa is the worthy boss.
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra , Yes, it is E.W. Dijkstra. As soon as mentioned EWD Many people will think of finding the shortest path Dijkstra Algorithm , as if to mention Sir. Tony Hoare , just remember Quick Sort Same. In fact, these algorithms are just the most trivial contributions of two oxen in their career. such as Dijkstra The algorithm is nothing more than Grandpa Dai one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six In order to demonstrate new computers ARMAC His computing ability and the results of his first attempt belong to his first algorithm. According to Grandpa Dai, when he worked out the shortest path algorithm, he didn't even use pen and paper. At that time, he and his wife were drinking coffee in the sun on the balcony of a coffee shop in Amsterdam, and suddenly they came up with this algorithm. Moreover, the algorithm research at that time was relatively primitive. Cattle were busy using computers to do numerical calculations, and they ignored discrete algorithms. At that time, there was not even a decent professional journal focusing on discrete algorithms. Grandpa Dai then postponed publishing the algorithm. until one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine He published this algorithm in Numerische Mathematik On the inaugural issue of. :-)
EWD High spirited in many fields, both theory and programming Expert of 。 It's just that many of his work is profound, and the old gentlemen of the school think that the undergraduates can't accept it, so they don't tell them about it.
Grandpa Dai probably became famous because of the shortest path algorithm, so someone asked him to join another computer X1 And assigned him the task of designing real-time interrupt system. Now it seems that real-time interruption may not matter, but you should know that, X1 There is no concept of real-time interruption before. Realizing it is a huge gamble. Grandpa Dai was reluctant at first, but could not stand the project leader Bram And Carel Turn of “ Tout ” : We know that real-time interruption makes your work very difficult, but an ox like you can certainly do it. As a result, Grandpa Dai was completely punctured by sugar coated bullets and took over the hot potato. Two or three years later, he not only made a real-time interruption, but also wrote his doctoral thesis around it, and successfully put on his doctoral cap.
It is in X1 Developed on Algo60 , one of the earliest high-level languages. Grandpa Dai works day and night eight I got it in six months Algo60 , and thus obtained one thousand nine hundred and seventy-two Turing Prize in. because Algo60 Grandpa Dai published a groundbreaking article: Recursive Programming Then people know that high-level languages can also efficiently implement recursion. It turns out that since then, all programmers have inevitably invented a word with Grandpa Dai ( It should be said that the concept ) Dealing with: stack. and Algo60 He also asked Grandpa Dai to think deeply about the problem of multiprogramming, and finally invented the concept that every system programmer can't get around: semaphore 。 Of course, Grandpa Dai always strictly formalizes the concept he invented, which is very scientific. Compared with these achievements, there is nothing to say about the philosopher who eats.
Funny to say, the university at that time ( I forgot which one ) I still felt that Grandpa Dai had no orthodox mathematical training and was not specialized in numerical analysis, so I reluctantly gave him a teaching post. This kind of minor setback cannot prevent the ox people like Grandpa Dai from creating history. He teaches numerical analysis (:-D) , while starting to develop a new operating system and training computer scientists. A few years later, THE Multiprogramming System Born in the sky. THE It is the first operating system that supports loose coupling and explicit synchronization processes, which makes it easy to strictly prove that the system is free of deadlocks. Unfortunately, Grandpa Dai's department was illiterate and forced to disband his research team (1972 In, Grandpa Dai told his dean that he had won the Turing Prize, and the dean's first reaction was that you like to give prizes randomly when you are working on computers ) 。 This made Grandpa Dai very depressed and depressed. In extreme depression, Grandpa Dai decided to use writing to treat his depression. So the classic came into being: Notes on Structured Programming 。 From then on, Grandpa Dai was respected as the founder of structured programming, and his depression was also cured.
Anders Hejlsberg , Microsoft .NET He is the chief architect of, and a top master of programming language design and implementation. He made it Turbo Pascal, Same Delphi, J++( Especially WFC) ， C#, And .NET The main author of. The names of these works are enough for his biography. As a programmer, I am speechless in front of such masters. Give birth to a child as Anders Said. Levi's <> It has been described in detail in Anders I don't have to waste my breath: http: //java.mblogger.cn/iexploiter/posts/1505.aspx
Artima There are Anders On C# A series of interviews. MSDN There is a section above Anders Video of the tour guide. If you are interested, you can go to see the talent of Niuren.
