Do you have any?
Charles H. Moore. If I were even one-half as persistent as he in the face of adversity I'd have gone much farther in life than I have.
Do I need any?
What's wrong with having personal heroes?
What about Linus Torvalds? Impressive work with both Linux and git. Changed the world. But he seems so angry.
Linus Torvalds
>>5
Distributed version control existed before git and performant distributed version control was created concurrently with the Mercurial project. Had git not been made it seems that Mercurial would have acheived the exact same thing. It's not clear what would have happened had Linux never existed, it seems that things could just have easily been worse, or better, and maybe even the same. It wasn't a particularly innovative idea to create a kernel capable of running GNU software using a copyleft license, and I imagine it would have happened eventually regardless, but it's not clear it neccessarily would have succeeded, or what the end result would have been.
I wasn't too familiar with Joe Armstrong while he was alive, but I watched a lot of his talks when he sadly died last year and came to like him a lot. He could talk simultaneously about abstract concepts and implementation details in a way that just breathed passion.
>>7
I hate faggots like you.
>>7 You can say about any large figure that their ideas were "in the air" at the time and had Torvalds or Einstein or Foucault or Darwin not been there someone else would have made similar contributions. That doesn't mean we can't learn from the people who actually were there and the specific contributions (and mistakes) they made.
This is /prog/. So for me it's of course the Sussman
>>9,10
I'm not him, but I similarly recognize that nothing Linus Torvalds has done is original. He has led large groups in writing bloated copies of other designs, and not even good designs. The disrespect Torvalds shows to the FSF and Free Software in favor of Open Source is just further reason to dislike him, and not feel much sorry for what's currently happening to him. He has certainly done his part to undermine everything Stallman worked for.
I don't really have any role models anymore. I can think highly of several people, however, and most prefer those like me, who have a fascination with low-level programming, a dislike of UNIX and other trash, and a proper sense of ideals to lead them.
>>11
The only correct answer.
Nils Holm just seems like the type of guy I'm glad exists.
https://t3x.org/index.html
Who else but Donald Knuth?
>>14
Shameful but I would like to have a pirated copy of his at least one of his books because I cannot afford them.
Is it possible to get my hands on Practical Compiler Construction or Sketchy Scheme, 4.5th Edition? Do you think he would be okay with someone asking for a free copy?
I looked all over the (clear) internet but nothing.
>>16
Practical Compiler Construction, and an older version of Sketchy Scheme seem to be on library genesis.
Joe Armstrong & Ken Iverson
>>16
If you really want to get your hands on them that badly, why not work and scrape together some cash? There is no shame this way when it pertains to a small-time author's works.
>>19
I'll assume >>16 asked because he's in a developing country where access, currency strength, and even the means to make online payments greatly limit his options to buy outright.
If he isn't, then you're right ofc.
Fabrice Bellard.
Do you practice literate programming?
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
These are the enemies of software freedom. They have founded evil megacorporations that trap innocent people in proprietary software slavery. Do not be seduced by evil.
Bill Gates
https://www.stallman.org/microsoft.html
[...]
Microsoft's chatbot in China threatens people who communicate using prohibited words. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/11/microsofts-chinese-chatbot-encounters-sensitive-words/
[...]
Microsoft forced a ridiculous "open" standard, OOXML (used in DOCX files), through the International Standards Organization by corrupting most of the national standards organizations that voted. The specifications document was so long that it would be difficult for anyone else to implement it properly. When the proposed standard was submitted through the usual track, experienced evaluators rejected it for many good reasons. Microsoft responded using a special override procedure in which its money buy the support of many of the voting countries, thus bypassing proper evaluation and demonstrating that ISO can be bought. http://noooxml.wikidot.com/
[...]
Steve Jobs
https://www.stallman.org/apple.html
Censorship
Spying
Worker abuse
Right to repair
Tax avoidance
Other reasons
>>25
Where do they get those money which they use to buy ISO? And why do they get them in the first place?
So who are the real enemies of software freedom?
>>26
The other enemies of software freedom are the people who admire and fund the evil promoters of proprietary software (e.g. >>23).