A stream of letters and signs flickers and flickers across the screen, emitting a faint pale glow. The right hand leaves the mouse and joins the left in the quick movements on the keyboard , while the lines of code grow and grow. Few will understand what is going on behind that code, but billions of “1s” and “0s” are traveling from one place to another and troubleshooting computers around the world. That programmer, along with so many others everywhere, is shaping the future of computing .
Today, it seems impossible to imagine a world without computers. That invention, which had been in development for a long time and came out of the shadows in the second half of the 20th century, looked more like a behemoth than a tool and only a select few understood what was going on all those cable racks. Now, our pocket contains a computer a thousand times more powerful than any of that time and we are capable of doing things that were unthinkable a few decades ago. Technology has exceeded all expectations .
And, precisely, that great advance that we have lived and that we enjoy today has come thanks to geniuses from all over who saw a raw vein in that strange world that was computing. Lists of people who learned, innovated and even invented new ways to make this immense field of knowledge grow and make it reach ordinary people. Many names will sound familiar to you, but others will be forgotten whispers behind their own achievements.
Just as the basis of the story appeared with writing, the heart and roots of computing are in programming languages . With them, as by html art, programs, systems and applications are born and die, they are updated and the errors that appear are solved. In a world as big as that computer on the table, these are some of the most important programmers in history .
