Ask HN: Who are your programming heroes, and why? - igolden
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davismwfl
I can't call them hero's but definitely a couple of the people I admire
engineering wise are Bjarne Stroustrup and Martin Fowler. Mainly because both
of them take a very pragmatic approach to things and I've never gotten the
sense that they feel they have all the answers or stopped learning. Both from
my very limited interactions with them and from reading their work and
interviews appear to be humble and value intelligence and the principle of
question everything.

There are others, such as Pat Helland, again, I wouldn't call him a hero, but
he definitely influenced a lot of my thinking. Mainly because he asked hard
questions that makes you have to defend your position from a place of
intellectual strength, logic and reason. I've kinda lost track of him in the
last number of years.

One more modern engineer I can say I think is pretty damn awesome is TJ
Holowaychuk. I do not know him, never interacted with him (that I know of),
but his work is pretty awesome and his depth of digging in is just insane.

BTW I don't consider just because someone influenced me or that I respect them
that I agree with all their opinions/ideas, sometimes their
opinion/stance/idea was the catalyst that made me defend my position to know I
was right (or at least that I felt right).

~~~
igolden
Great response, thanks for that. I admire all of the engineers you mentioned
as well.

