love it! i’m 41 - been coding, since i was 12, and i hope to be coding for many many more years. just when things get stale, another technology/language comes along to challenge u.
the management track is for the truly uncreative - its all about following someone else’s process… they’ve been trying to dumb me down for years but my brain cells keep coming back!
excellent blog - excellent responses - thsi is what bloggin is all about
Great article! But I see too few data points.
I’m interested to know in what category do these people fall in:
Linus Torvalds
Phil Greenspun
Joel Spolsky
Anders Hejlsberg
Bill Joy
James Gosling
PHP, C, C++, Java, Python, Perl Programming Tips techniques
A good read:
http://digg.com/programming/PHP_C_C_Java_Python_Perl_Programming_Tips_techniques
what about George Bush? I’ve heard he was a great programmer, at least he can write program to instruct troops to kill iraqi people 
hey, we’re talking about coding…not politics 
Interesting. But see, any classification of any thing finally turns out nonesense. Don’t label yourself, which is pathetic.
I believe Linus Torvalds should be in lvl 7, where Bill Gates should be in lvl 6
This is a ridiculous post.
There are two types:
Programmer - He who understands everything about the software development cycle AND the machine’s he is working on.
Coder - He who thinks he is a programmer but just regurgitates code, occassionally creating something new from something old.
99.9999999% of the IT pro’s who think they are programmers, are in fact coders of various skillsets.
Unless you program solely in machine code or 1’s and 0s, you are a simple, replacable coder. You are not special and no one thinks you are.
And Gates, despite the stupidity of the comments here, did a LOT of coding in his early days. 16 hour days coding, working late nights coding, busting his ass coding. Doesnt mean he was the greatest coder, but he most certainly was a coder.
Comment feature: Bane of the internet. Let the idiots reign.
If we’re listing legendary programmers, second in the pantheon after Knuth: Edgar F Codd.
Unknown Programmer… hey, that’s me!
WAIT - Ruby On Rails guy and ID guy make #7, but Gosling doesn’t? This is a joke.
You really should change the post where you specify the dead programmers. People who don’t read the comments, don’t realize your point, and thinks that guys are really all dead.
what about men who haven’t seen a programer in their life,
know nothing about programming ,but studying abt computers in college.
i am one such guy.
what to do?
I would not like be programmer for ever. I’m a good programmer, I’ll hope have my own business
I use computer a lot. I have never been interested in programming. What do yo think guyz?
have been a professional programmer for 8 years. [still age >>what do you wanna do with your life?
Become a mathematician in the near future and discover something original, even if not at the level of my heroes like Newton, Gauss, Riemann.
That said I enjoy my work [programming] - even if I were to be lifelong professional programmer, I would still consider it a nice life from the career point of view.
are open source programmers amateur programmers? really?
i would think of myself as a 3. i think that almost everyone goes through stage 1. its just that some people might just get stuck at that stage, those can be classified as bad programmers.
Thank for information
I like to think that we all had a level one moment in our lives. Don’t you agree?
I’d rather just be alive, period.