[Sussex] NOW: So, who are the all-time greats? WAS Hello all

[Mark Harrison]

My criteria were:

- Most long-term influence on the course of IT
- Open publication of what they discovered / invented

This is NOT about "who were the greatest programmers", but who had the most
influence. To say that Bill Gates didn't have influence because he didn't
write much code is like saying that Churchill didn't win the war because he
didn't fire a single shot....

> > - Tony Hoare - There was someone that worked at Gatwick called that...
>
> Did a lot of work on translation software.  Invented the Quicksort
> algorithm.. failed in just about everything he tried to achieve - but
> that's mainly because he tried to achieve some very difficult things :)

I listed Tony for two reasons:

1: I think that Quicksort is important, not just because it sorts quickly
:-), but because it provided a much-needed demonstration that algorithmic
efficiency was going to be a critical piece of software engineering
development.

2: He was probably more influential than anyone else in getting the
mainstream acadmic community in the UK to take IT seriously.

He is, by the way, the only one on the list I've actually met :-)

Regards,

Mark