

Ask HN: Do you consider anyone a pioneer in computer science since 1990? - ilbe

http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science
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ig1
I think it's too early to say, because the impact of work is seen over time.

But candidates probably include Breiman/Cutler for Random Forests,
Dean/Ghemawat for MapReduce, Peter Shor for Shor's algorithm, Daphne Koller
for machine learning, Jon Kleinberg for network algorithms, Luis von Ahn for
human computation.

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onion2k
A couple of obvious exceptions are John Carmack (for 3D graphics algorithm
design) and Linus Torvalds (for OS design), although whether or not they
contributed to 'computer science' rather than their particular software domain
is debatable.

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pharaohgeek
I would argue that Torvalds merely built upon already established OS
principles, rather than being a pioneer in OS design. Linux, by design, is
nothing more than an open-source UNIX equivalent. There's nothing wrong with
that, of course. It's just not some groundbreaking work. I completely agree
with Carmack, however.

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oldbuzzard
How about James Gosling for Java(1994).

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argumentum
The word "pioneer" refers to contributions at the _birth_ of a field. CS is
now an established field, there are no more "pioneers" in the sense that there
are no longer "pioneers" discovering America by crossing oceans.

There are certainly "pioneers" operating today in sub-domains of CS: in
machine learning, artificial intelligence, in parallelization, networking,
cryptocurrency etc.

(and countless other fields related to or derived from CS).

