They are the software engineers who disrupted many industries such as payment gateway integration, mobile banking apps, digital currency and blockchain.
The world is a better place because of the machines we use these days. Each is given a specific task that help our activities become faster, more efficient and takes the load off our work. The most famous machines can be brought wherever we want and whenever we want. This just goes to show that life has been very convenient to anyone who has access to their personal computers and smartphones. How about the software side of it?
In each hardware are software programs which give us what we need to “survive” in this digital age. These includes programs that allow us to connect with other people, shop online and browse the internet to get the information we need. So who we thank for all of these? Software engineers, of course! With all of the time and effort they dedicated to develop programs that allow our lives to be easier and cooler, they have helped human kind be liberated from the tedious tasks people get without computers.
While there are hundreds or thousands of software engineers around us to thank for, there are ones who stand out among the crowd. They have helped shape the world wide web and the computer industry and the list below shows who they are and what exactly they did. While they may not be as famous as the ones we know in the Silicon Valley such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, they surely have contributed to the success of the work they’ve done.
Tim Bray
Source: Wikipedia
Bray graduated with a Bachelor of Science degrees in Math and Computer Science. He contributed in developing XML, a developer’s tool and co-founded Open Text Corporation, Textuality and Antartica Systems.
Paul Buchheit
Source: Wikipedia
Graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, he worked with Intel and Google. He was among those who developed Gmal, the famous webmail service most of us are using right now.
John Carmack
Source: Wikipedia
He co-founded id Software and one of the responsible people for the computer games, Doom and Quake.
Dave Cutler
Source: Wikipedia
He worked in DEC and Microsoft, helped develop Windows NT and co-founded Agrippa-Ord.
Max Levchin
Source: Wikipedia
Levchin graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and developed PayPal, the famous online payment system which eventually paved the way to the payment gateway integration in the retail industry.
Pierre Omidyar
Source: Wikipedia
He also graduated with a degree in computer science. He was one of the responsible people for eBay, an online auction and shopping website.
Alexey Pajitnov
Source: Wikipedia
Pajitnov graduated with a degree in computer software engineering. He worked in Microsoft before he co-founded The Tetris Company. He developed the famous computer game, Tetris.
Jimmy Wales
Source: Wikipedia
He’s the famous internet entrepreneur who co-founded Wikipedia.
Michael Widenius
Source: The Register UK
Widens developed MySQL, the famous open-source database, when he co-founded MYSQL AB.
Jamie Zawinski
Source: Paddy’s Blog
If you remembered the the Netscape Navigator, this was the guy who helped developed the web browser.
Linus Benedict Torvalds
Source: Wikipedia
He played a major role in developing the Linux kernel.
Anders Hejlsberg
Source: Wikipedia
He’s a software engineer who was the original author of Turbo Pascal and chief architect of Delphi.
Do you know anyone that should be added in this list? Leave a comment below to let us know!
Please bear in mind that software engineers have a different role in a company compared to a computer programmer. Software engineers focus on applying engineering in developing, planning and creating programs. While the programmers will be assigned to write the software codes, which will be assigned to them by the software engineers. Software engineers who focus on operating systems are called systems software developers. This who focus on applications such as games, word processors and databases are called applications software developers.
