some well known people
TRANSCRIPT
(through my lens as a software developer)
Some well known people and some of their contributions
Just like the Four Heavenly Kings,software development has their famous four…
there are actually more, maybe for another day :)
（⼀一）Martin Fowler• British, born 1963
• Started software in 1980
• Co-authored Agile manifesto
• Popularised the term Dependency Injection (which later influences DI containers like Spring, Autofac etc)
• Formalise Refactoring
• Written (and still writing) articles about technology.
• Currently Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
（⼀一）Martin Fowler
（⼆二）Kent Beck• American, born 1961
• One of the original signatory of Agile Manifesto
• Proponent of Test-Driven Development (which has become the mainstream in s/w development)
• Author of SUnit and JUnit (which later rise xUnit tools)
• Popularised the CRC cards (Class-responsibility-collaboration)
• Currently works at Facebook
“I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.”
（⼆二）Kent Beck
（三）Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)• American
• Started software since 1970
• Co-authored Agile manifesto
• Initiated the meeting of the group that leads to Agile manifesto
• Proponent of Clean Code, TDD and craftsmanship
• Brings together the set of OOD principles aka S.O.L.I.D.
• Currently working at CleanCoders
（三）Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)
"Master programmers think of systems as stories to be told rather than programs to be written."
（三）Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)
（四）Eric Gamma• Swiss, born in 1961
• Co-authored the influential Design Patterns book
• Co-wrote JUnit with Kent Beck
• Developed the "Monaco" suite of components for browser-based development found in Visual Studio online, Visual Studio Code etc.
“Program to an interface, not an implementation”
（四）Eric Gamma
The following are also well-known but not everyone knows about them
(at least from what I observed)
Jerry Weinberg• American, born in 1933
• Published more than 40 books and 400 articles
• Involved in NASA Project Mercury back in 1950s
• Year 2000 Winner of The Stevens Award for Contributions to Software Engineering
• His contributions (in the form of writings, workshops) has inspired many. Some writers called him the Grandfather of Agile.
Jerry Weinberg“Helping myself is even harder than helping others.”
“If the software doesn't have to work, you can always meet any other requirement.”
Jerry Weinberg“People don't become leaders because they never fail. They become leaders because of the way they respond to failure.”
“If you are a leader, the people are your work.”
Jerry Weinberg
“You don’t have to be a boss to be a leader”
Michael Feathers• American
• Started software in 1991
• Worked in Object Mentor
• Introduced the acronym S.O.L.I.D.
• Provides insights to deal with legacy code
Michael Feathers
“Programming is the art of doing one thing at a time”
“The most subtle bugs that we can inject are bugs related to inheritance.”
James Grenning• American, born in 1955-ish
• Co-authored Agile manifesto
• Invented Planning Poker, an estimation technique
• Author of CppUTest (a unit testing framework for C++)
• Currently at Wingman Software
James Grenning(on customers changing their mind)
“Maybe you are in the wrong business. You can deliver exactly what the client asks for and the most likely thing to happen is that they thank you and ask you to change it. Software change is part of being a developer, so you better get used to it. Even more, you better get good at it”
Jez Humble• American
• Started software before 2000
• Currently works at Chef
• The idea of Continuous Delivery spread like wildfire. Probably influenced the growth of automation tools on infrastructure and virtualisation. Also increased conversations of reducing the gap between development and operations.
Jez Humble
“If it hurts, do it more frequently, and bring the pain forward.”
“Not ‘can we build it?’ but ‘should we build it?’”
Rachel Davis• Started software since 1987
• Joined XP team at ConneXtra in 2000
• Probably the first to provide an insight to what Agile coaching is about
• Currently a coach for development and product teams in Unruly
Dave Thomas• England
• Coined ‘Code Kata’ and ‘DRY’ (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle
• Co-authored The Pragmatic Programmer, a classic craftsmanship book that inspired many developers
• Currently at The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Steve Freeman• UK
• Started software in 1994
• Created JMock, a mocking framework in Java
• Known for the London school of TDD (vs the classic TDD)
• Influences interaction-based testing (as oppose to state-based testing)
Eric Evans• American
• Started the idea (Ubiquitous Language) of building up a common language between users and developers. Influenced companies to reduce the gap between them.
• Domain-Driven Design influences an alternative method instead of fixing software design upfront.
Esther Derby• American
• Started software before 1990
• Founder of AYE (Amplify Your Effectiveness) conference
• Influences the concept of retrospectives into workplace
There are more but these should be sufficient for now :)