
Ask HN: Which hackers do you look up to the most? - qqwerz
(Hackers as in expert programmers or security researchers, not venture capitalists or anyone of that ilk.)
======
noir_lord
Rear Adm. Grace Hopper.

She wrote the first compiler which she was assured couldn't be done after
already doing it, she rose to the top of a male dominated field and did it on
merit, she took a leave from Vasser to join WAVES (womens volunteer corp
during WWII) as a junior lieutenant, refused to retire and ended up a Read
Admiral.

Ada gets a lot of respect as the 'first' female programmer but Hopper is at
least as significant imo.

> The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the
> compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do
> you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need
> that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals
> so they don't forget to take chances

~~~
DanBC
Her description and visual aid for "nano second" are brilliant.

[http://blog.jgc.org/2012/10/a-downloadable-
nanosecond.html](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/10/a-downloadable-nanosecond.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosecond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosecond)

------
jrcii
Leslie Lamport. There are a dozen larger than life programmers out there, but
reading his biography I was struck with a kind of resigned sorrow at the
concrete expression of a certain ideal life that I always wanted for myself
and know I'll never achieve. BS from MIT at an absurd age, math PhD, goes on
to write TLA+ which is a marvel of sophistication. Turing Award.

The king kind of has to be Dennis Ritchie in my mind, I can't think of code
that's more influential in general and definitely in my life than C and Unix.

I like Rich Hickey a lot, what he's done and judging from his talks his
personality.

More obscure but this guy Fabrice Bellard is an animal, he puts out this
insane amount of sophisticated code like, oh btw guys here's a fully working
LTE stack.

~~~
pinewurst
Don't forget Lamport did LaTeX too.

------
hello_newman
For me personally, there has been no one more inspiring to me than DHH.
Brilliant, a true hacker at heart, opinionated, entrepreneurial, and I also
happen to share his stance on starting a business vs playing the startup
lottery.

I'd also extend my admiration for the core rails team as well. A decade plus
strong, and they still make beautiful software.

------
dividual
I respect any hacker who gave up playing the game years ago because they
realized just how insecure everything was, yet became comfortable with this
(Read 'everything is broken' by Quinn Norton, and watch some of Haroon Meer's
talks).

It's a kind of comfort that comes with years of hacking, and the quality of
their work is unmistakeable. Look at Vinay Gupta's work on Ethereum. He openly
states how much he distrusts Intel and X86 and is doing public speaking to
wake others up about this. Also any person working on open hardware, or
Trusted platform modules are worth watching.

~~~
dewyatt
I feel you. We're all building on a foundation that is so full of holes that
security is like an inside joke.

I'm keeping my eye on TALOS [1], but I admit I haven't had time to research
it. It's just one tiny piece of the puzzle though.

[1]
[https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php](https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php)

------
fatimafouda
Aaron Swartz, not just for his programming skills, but also for never giving
up on his fight to make knowledge opensource (See the Guirella Open Access
Manifesto)

Other programmers I look up to are:

Tim Berners-Lee

Linus Torvalds

John Carmack

------
cloudjacker
Geohot

Its impressive how such brash egoism has allowed him to monetize his hacks and
general tinkering. Leaving modesty reserved for the poor and hobbyists taking
up space in the garage.

~~~
reefoctopus
I especially liked his sony rap:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg)

------
nekopa
don knuth.

Besides from his talent, I love the fact that he is still working on a project
that will never be finished -TAOCP.

I look up to him as a hacker, not an academic, in the way that hackers scratch
an itch and write something cool. His itch was typesetting, so he just
nonchalantly created tex. Using a methodology (literate programming) he
created to scratch a previous itch.

Plus he likes to compose music (great hackers hack across domains)

------
NetStrikeForce
All the people involved in the Debian project. The world would be so different
without them.

------
JustSomeNobody
I'll note a few of the very first ones. There's a couple modern ones, but I
think the ones that influenced me earlier are more important, so I'll stop
there.

Jim Butterfield: The very first programmer I looked up to. I learned a lot
reading his code.

Michael Tischer: PC Intern author. That book was very influential for me. I
have this crazy drive to know how things work and that book explained a lot to
me.

Michael Abrash: My assembly language skills owed[0] a lot to his writing.

John Carmack: How could he not be on anyone's list?

[0] Past tense; I don't write anything in assembly anymore.

------
sgillen
Steve Wozniak is a good one. He basically designed the entirety of the Apple I
and Apple II. My favorite anecdote is that to this day he doesn't really
understand how the Apple IIs color screen works.

------
EliRivers
Greenblatt, Gosper, Woz, Draper (Captain Crunch), Roberta Williams, Stallman.

If you're reading this and you haven't read Levy's "Hackers", stop reading
this and do so.

Also Brendan Gregg. He's really good at what he does, he clearly loves doing
it, and everything he learns about doing it he tells everyone else as fast as
he can. He's a demonstration of the hacker ethic.

------
xufi
Dennis Ritchie. The father of UNIX. He's had a impact of how I've come
understand UNIX to be today.

~~~
frou_dh
Then is Ken Thompson the mother?

------
mindcrime
Wow, so many to choose from. But I'd include folks like:

Bjarne Stroustrup

Dennis Ritchie

Rob Pike

Alan Kay

Alan Cox

Linus Torvalds

Margaret Hamilton

Kevin Mitnick

Richard Stallman

Paul Graham

Robert T. Morris

~~~
bryanmathew
Out of these Linus Torvalds, Margaret Hamilton, Kevin Mitnick and Morris have
some kind of extraordinary skills.

------
frou_dh
I admire Rich Hickey, especially as a communicator of ideas about programming.
After he released Clojure, he went on a rampage of one fantastic presentation
after another.

------
pizza
Samy Kamkar!

Here is a video where he demonstrates how to open garage doors with a wireless
Mattel toy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSRaIU9_Vc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSRaIU9_Vc)

He also wrote that one XSS worm for myspace several years ago. Hi Samy, in
case you happen to read this ;)

------
dorfuss
Bisqwit, of course, but gosh, there is so much great talent around.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71lli8MS8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71lli8MS8s)

~~~
dorfuss
and Larry Wall

------
mod50ack
Bill Joy. Say what you will of what became of Sun, but the guy knew his stuff.
Wrote the original vi, plus a whole lot of the rest of BSD, undeniably
influential to anybody who uses a NIX system today (whether it be BSD or not)

------
decasteve
Not sure if they'd be considered hackers but visionaries that have paved the
way for hackers by enabling the computing we have today:

J.C.R. LickLider

Vannevar Bush

It's worth going back and reading what they wrote/said. Every hacker should
know these names.

------
romantsegelskyi
Dave Cutler
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler))

------
exolymph
I like Steve Klabnik a lot.

------
tropo
Eric S. Raymond

terminals, version control, NTP... all ugly old things that MUST WORK

------
haidrali
For me I look up to Salvatore Sanfilippo aka antirez is best programmer, he
wrote Redis

------
herbst
As DHH was already mentioned, i want to throw Aaron Patterson, Linda Luikas
and Sam Aaron in the mix.

------
bjourne
Martin v Löwis, Joe Groff, Thomas Nagy, Armin Ronacher, RhodiumToad and lots,
lots, lots more.

------
mfalcon
Gabriel Weinberg (duckduckgo) and Andrej Karpathy

------
fosco
Zero Cool and Alec Sadler.

~~~
swah
Phiberoptik is also interesting!

------
probinso
Moxie Marlinspike

------
erac1e
Julian Assange.

------
pinewurst
Dan Bernstein

