Personal Heroes
Intro
We all have heroes. People we look up. People who we draw inspiration from.
They might be people whose work we admire. Or perhaps an artist or musician who is able express an emotion that sends chills up your spine.
In my first office I created a collage of a bunch of my heroes at the time and I kept it above my desk. It was like a religious icon in the sense that I hoped to draw power and inspiration from the presense of so many great minds.
I figured it was time to do the same thing here on my weblog. So this is just a post to list all the people who inspire me. It's meant to be a living document so it'll definitely grow over time as I think of people.
And of course it's in no order of importance.
Software
J. C. R. Licklider
J. C. R. Licklider Computing's Johnny Appleseed.
Vint Cerf
Vint Cerf one of the Fathers of the Internet.
Alan Turing
Alan Turing WWII era mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace mathematician and first programmer
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage considered a "father of the computer"
Grace Hopper
Alan Kay
Grady Booch
Grady Booch software architecture and software engineering
John von Neumann
Larry Page
Larry Page Co-founder of Google
Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin Co-Founder of Google
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds creator of Linux
Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman creator of GNU and the Free Software Foundation
Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford author of Javascript The Good Parts
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs creator of Apple
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier security specialist.
Joel Spolsky
Joel Spolsky blogger at Joel on Software and creator of many products.
Jeff Atwood
Jeff Atwood blogger at Coding Horror and co-creator of the Stack Exchange Network
David Heinemeier Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson creator of Ruby on Rails
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble tech blogger
Science
Steven Hawking
Hackers
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz internet activist
Jacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum computer security researcher
Music
Andres Segovia
Andres Segovia classical guitarist
Christopher Parkening
Christopher Parkening classical guitarist and protoge of Segovia.
Trey Anastasio
Trey Anastasio guitarist for Phish
Mike Gordon
Mike Gordon bassist for Phish
Page McConnell
Page McConnell piano player in Phish
Jon Fishman
Jon Fishman drummer in Phish
Jerry Garcia
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix American guitar virtuoso
Bob Marley
Peter Tosh
Damian Marley
Stephen Marley
Ziggy Marley
Dave Matthews
Bradley Nowell
Madonna
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
George Harrison
Film
Quentin Tarantino
Author
Anne Rice
Stephen King
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens Hitch Slapped!
Misc
Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay chef and TV personality known for no nonsense ways.
Credit
As you can tell I'm mostly sourcing everything from Wikipedia.
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