Have you ever gotten that classic job interview question, "where do you see yourself in five years?" When asked, I'm always mentally transported back to a certain Twisted Sister video from 1984.
@Sarah - Well, so this is the sad truth. Not sure I’ll repeat that too much as it was a nice thing to believe :-)… To cope with this, I hope I’ll be able to buid a small software company or be part of one with a flat decision process. It must be a an objective of the company to keep coders at coding, otherwise promote them to management would often look like the easiest solution sometimes…
Unfortunately, so many proggies fit in the lower of the first seven levels of programmer hell. But, it keeps the rest employed. 
Carmack arguably belongs under the dead programmer title as well.
This is a cute list but the inclusion of Gates is egregiously wrong. I cannot fathom what compelled you to even put him on the list, much less at such a high station.
We can always take comfort in that everyone’s going to be a dead programmer at some point.
Somewhere between 4 and 5… Hmm, not bad for someone of 17 years, or is it? 
So, the 1 million question is… where are you Jeff? =D I would say… 7?
I wanna be a Dinosaur! 
That was probably the most meaningless post I’ve seen on this blog. You don’t HAVE to update just to update you know.
I wish I had learned Knuth was not dead BEFORE I sent flowers…
After 12 years I feel like I’ve finally reached 5 (within the last 2 years). What do they say? It takes 10 years to become truly proficient at anything… Oh how I’d like to get to 7 though! I can live without 6, and long ago accepted I don’t have the conviction for an 8
Fun article 
what do you wanna do with your life?
after 20 years, just like Twisted Sister’s song I wanna rock 1984 that song ain’t intended to the same audience, it would be kids stuff, renamed and used on a silly cartoon movie 2004 Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Goofy Goober Rock. The guitar riff is not played most likely on a real guitar with a fuzzy distortion and a loud Marshal Amp but on a silly piece of crappy lifeless game console that cannot wail.
So the same with the code of programmers. after 20 years the code and programming technique would just be kid’s stuff.
Are you trying to say that our goal is to do so well we make ourselves obsolete?
What about Woz, who still works at stuff? (Sorry for any slight gaps in comparison as I consider him more an engineer than programmer).
Dude, I almost just shat a brick because you said Knuth was a Dead Programmer! REDACT IT!
And the same goes for Kay!!
… and Dijkstra is just frozen 
If you think you’re a number 4 and you don’t understand why an Amateur Programmer is greater than the Unknown Programmer based on these descriptions you might actually be a number 2.
An amateur programmer loves to code, and it shows
beats
It’s just a job, not their entire life.
ScottGu is an example of no. 6, the famous programmer. So are you by the way, Jeff.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, again, this isn’t even your idea. Oddly enough the guy you link to begins counting from 0, which is a common CS convention and you start at 1. That’s not a big deal, it’s just sort ironic.
As for all you guys babbling about how people are missing the point of the post … what is the point?