Answers from the Great Programmers
I was just recently reading an article on the Sztywny Blog where the author sent a number a questions to a variety of today’s famous and great programmers. While he did not get replies from all the people he asked, he did get responses from
- Linus Torvalds - Linux Kernel
- Dave Thomas - Author of Pragmattic Programming, other great books
- David Heinemeier Hansson - creator of Rails
- Steve Yegge - Author of Wyvern, has a great programming blog
- Peter Norvig - Research Director at Google
- Guido Van Rossum - Creator of Python
- James Gosling - Java language creator
- Tim Bray - author of the Atom and XML specifications, as well as a blogger.
Many questions are asked, including where these guys learned programming, important skills, the value of math and physics with regards to programming, the future of programming, their favourite technology, their favourite tools, books and much more - a great read!
One thing that does come across while reading the article is that David Heinemeier Hansson is a very different breed of programmer from the rest of the people interviewed. At least, it seems to me that his answers stand out from the rest. He seems to be less of an academic, as a practicing programmer. That may not be the most accurate way to state the difference, but it is the best I can do.
Regardless, these are some of the top minds in the business, and there is a lot of interesting points they make. Very good reading for any programmer or Computer Science student. If nothing else, read the section where they describe their favourite tools - You may find a better environment than what you currently use!
