Well I’m a non American and I can’t imagine not knowing who are Bob Dylan, steven Spielberg and Ronald Reagan. This guy was probably “non earthling” more than “non American”. Lol
Well, I agree with Jeff(tho’ I’ve snarked off at him before). If you’re a 9-5 punch-the-clock working stiff, maybe you don’t know who those folks are.
But if you do enough rummaging around and reading, you’re going to read about so-and-so who pioneered this, or popularized that, or was pretty good at the hoo-bab. Thing is, if you don’t have a good memory or you don’t rummage and study, you won’t know the Big Kahunas of your area. Either of those is going to disqualify you for a job that requires good memory and some independent study.
I guess it might be the difference between a technician and a professional.
Thanks Charlie Lobo to summarize my thought 
I have a similar routine, I ask ‘What are your thoughts on Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood?’, if the answer contains any hint of positivity I know the time to invest in breaking the programmers existing bad habits and building them into a competent, able developer is too great and simply not worth it, especially if influenced by those morons.
I had a boss who thought that anybody fond of using a pair of jeans HAD to be dumb. I think Jeff has reached this level too, to my surprise.
BTW, is Jeff getting used to the “fire & forget” way of blogging? I can’t find any answer neither this post, nor some of the previous.
Perhaps this blog has reached inertia enough to keep rolling without his interaction, kinda prepetuum-mobile-blog.
But if you do enough rummaging around and reading, you’re going to read about so-and-so who pioneered this, or popularized that, or was pretty good at the hoo-bab. Thing is, if you don’t have a good memory or you don’t rummage and study, you won’t know the Big Kahunas of your area. Either of those is going to disqualify you for a job that requires good memory and some independent study.
What kind of idiot would want to hire people based on their praise of people whose influence stopped being relative - or even tactile - over a decade ago?
I would much rather have a developer with a brain that can work out problems than an idiot that can recite useless trivia.
I enjoy most of your posts Jeff, but the last few days need a reset.
Jeff, your blog posts used to be ‘all winners’, but in the last year they have become ‘hit or miss’. Well, at least you’ll make some money when people click through and buy the books on Amazon, which you’ve conveniently linked for us
While I agree that understanding the history of computing is extremely important, I wouldn’t give a programmer an automatic ‘no-hire’ for not knowing these names. It’s exactly the type of closed minded, binary decision process that old school business always tries to impose. If a developer wasn’t aware of Knuth’s, "The Art of Computer Programming’, it would send up a red flag, and I would question him/her in greater depth with regard to algorithms.
As a side note, I used to ask potential development managers if they read ‘Joel on Software’, and again it would raise a red flag if they hadn’t. But now, your and Joels posts are less relevant and poignant than they used to be. #FAIL
Paul Nathan says, “But if you do enough rummaging around and reading, you’re going to read about so-and-so who pioneered this, or popularized that, or was pretty good at the hoo-bab.”
Yes, which would explain why the name Donald Knuth is somehow familiar, a common reflex for people who ‘fail’ Jeff’s test.
Or course, the implication is that I don’t give a crap about reading up on software engineering but from the volumes of self-study I’ve done I couldn’t remember specifically where Knuth fit in. Did he invent one of the many programming languages I don’t use? Was he instrumental in developing Unix? Is he one of the GoF? Or did he find/popularize some algorithm?
Is that bit of trivia really a deal-breaker? Or is it better that I know which container has the best algorithmic complexity for what you want to do with a collection of objects?
By all means, do your best to guage the passion and affinity for extra self-study in any candidate - but it is foolish to think you can grade effectively testing such specific name-dropping and factoids.
How come no one’s mentioned this famous developer?
I wonder how many of the guys on the list know about each other.
I better go and click on the Amazon links, whilst sending the CodeHorror referrals, and purchase those books or i won’t have any chance of ever getting a job - and risk losing my current one!
Oh wait, i forgot that i’m not that easily manipulated.
As someone previously mentioned, it is important to differentiate between name dropping and actual proper familiarity with the works of one of the luminaries of the field.
Being able to say “Knuth is that old guy who wrote all those big books on algorithms” isn’t at all impressive compared to actually having read his books. I’d rather know if you can tell me the difference between NP-Complete and NP.
Similarly, I don’t care whether you know that Peter Norvig wrote “that AI book”, I’d rather know whether you’re familiar with the “no free lunch” theorem.
You might know who Ken Thompson is but can you tell me the advantages and disadvantages of micro-kernels and monolithic kernels?
etc etc etc, I could go on. For those of you who actually know who those above 3 people are, can you then follow that knowledge up with actual knowledge of that field? I doubt it for most.
where in the hell is John Carmack?
Coders at work is an excelent reading!! It’s really cool to know a little about how those programmers think and how they write software.
I admit that I don’t know all of the programmers on that list. Specifically, I’ve heard of Brendan Eich, Douglas Crockford, Brad Fitzpatrick, Donald Knuth, Ken Thompson, Joshua Bloch, and Jamie Zawinski. Of those, I only know what Eich, Fitzpatrick, and Thompson did (well, I know Knuth wrote some books on algorithms).
Of the ones I do know, I fail to see why two of them are important.
For instance, why would I expect people to know Brad Fitzpatrick? His major claim to fame is that he created Livejournal. I know his company created several technologies used by it (memcached, perlbal, etc…), but I was not aware that he was personally involved in any of them!
Also, why would you expect people to know Brenden Eich, the guy who created the mess that is Javascript? I only found out who he was when the browser makers rejected his ECMAScript 4 proposal.
I couldn’t agree less. The biggest mistakes I’ve ever seen made in hiring developers in the past, are programmers who won’t move with the times.
“What are your thoughts on Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood?”
Instant hire: “Who?”
The coders we despise are the guys that waste all of their time reading some BS written by Joel or Jeff. Joel is busy managing a company that wrote fogbugz. If I can remember writting a full blown helpdesk system is easy as pie…
I’m amazed at how many people doesn’t even know Knuth. He’s the father of algorithm complexity, Big-O notation, analysis of algorithms.
Sure, there are many people who don’t know what that is either, and I couldn’t care less about them. But I’m guessing many of the people complaining do know that linear complexity is better than exponential complexity. How can one study such subject and not have an inkling of who Knuth is, I can’t fanthom.
I liked the one mentioning rivetters, and asking if they should develop a love of rivetting. Surely not, as long as they don’t pretend to be engineers. There are no rivetting jobs with computers, just engineering jobs being done by rivetters who think that’s all there is to it.
HA HA! These comments are hilarious!