<IT-Legenden/>

Ohne sie wäre die Mondlandung im Juli 1969 wahrscheinlich nicht erfolgreich gewesen – sie schrieb den Code für die Onboard Flug-Software des Apollo-Programm und prägte den Begriff “Software Engineering”.

"In our daily lives as programmers, we process text strings a lot. So I tried to work hard on text processing, namely the string class and regular expressions. Regular expressions are built into the language and are very tuned up for use." – Yukihiro Matsumoto.

Als Programmiererin entwickelte Mary Kenneth Keller die Programmiersprache BASIC mit. Als Wissenschaftlerin wurde ihr 1965 als erste Frau der Doktortitel in der damals noch jungen Disziplin Computer Science verliehen – ihren Platz in der Geschichte der Informatik hat sie sicher.

"It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering." – Jaron Lanier.

“At that time there wasn't anybody to consult –no books – no papers . There was ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), but didn't know about it.” – Jean E. Sammet

"Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things."

“My head is not in the sand. But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you. ” – Annie J. Easley

"I thought it [Unix] would be useful to essentially anybody like me because it was not built for someone else or some third party. It was written for Dennis and me and our group to do its work. And I think it would have been useful to anybody who did the kind of work that we did. And therefore, I always thought it was something really good that was going to take off." – Ken Thompson.

"Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch." – Tim Berners-Lee

"The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation." – Sergey Brin.

"Although the Perl Slogan is 'There's More Than One Way to Do It', I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something." – Larry Wall.

"We've had some tough times, but we've hung in there." – Paul Allen.

"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy." – Phil Zimmermann.

"Da steckt ein psychologischer Effekt dahinter! Du erledigst ständig Aufgaben, du wirst ständig vor ein neues Problem gestellt und löst es so gut es geht. Doch was übrig bleibt, sind nur deine Fehler. Die hässlichen Löcher auf dem Spielfeld. Also bist du stets motiviert, auch noch diese Aufgabe zu lösen!" – Alexei Paschitnow.

"A lot of [developers] have an amazingly weak grasp of physics. We've become a much more connected world and there's a lot more to program for than Web services." – James Gosling.

"I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology."

"Die Gefahr, dass der Computer so wird wie der Mensch, ist nicht so groß wie die Gefahr, dass der Mensch so wird wie der Computer."

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

"For some reason I get this key position of being one of two people that started the company that started the revolution." – Steve Wozniak.

"What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication." – Dennis Ritchie.

"If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering." – Jeff Bezos.

"It was an extraordinarily ambitious compiler for the time, when even hash tables were not yet well understood. One compiler, three source languages, targeted to two machines, Stretch and Harvest." – Frances E. Allen

Wie wurde Radia Perlman zur IT-Legende? Bei uns erfährst Du alles über die Vordenkerin der Informatik ➔ Los geht's!

"I think it’s very important to get more women into computing. Computing is too important to be left to men."

Die Computerpionierin glänzte in gleich zwei Männerdomänen: der Informatik und dem Militär. Grace Hopper brachte die erste Programmiersprache "COBOL" auf den Weg und erfand die Compiler-Technik.

Mit nur 21 Jahren gründete er gemeinsam mit zwei Freunden ein Unternehmen, das die Unterhaltungselektronik revolutionierte.