Makers of Code: Pioneers of Modern Technology

The human mind is a strange thing—it’s hard to guess what it might do on a whim. Take, for example, a gentleman in the 1970s: Dennis Ritchie. Sitting in the somber rooms of Bell Labs, he wondered one day, “Who can really understand these harsh languages of the machine called a computer? Why not make it a bit easier?” And so he created a language called C. A language without which half of today’s modern machines wouldn’t be standing.

Ritchie’s C became so robust that his disciple-like Bjarne Stroustrup thought—“The master’s language is great, but what if I add a touch of modernity, some extra tricks?” So in the 1980s, he added a new feather to C’s cap—naming it C++. By bringing in the fresh breeze of object-oriented programming, he showered the world of software with a cool rain.

Around the same time, another bold soul named Larry Wall thought—“To handle these troublesome text files, we need a powerful language.” In 1987, Perl was born. When it came to wrangling strings, Perl back then was like cutting through iron as if it were butter.

In the 1990s, while the world was falling in love with the internet, James Gosling of Sun Microsystems made a splash with Java. “Write once, run anywhere”—with this dream statement, he kept programmers awake at night. Meanwhile, Brendan Eich at Netscape created JavaScript in just ten days, instantly breathing life into the web. Imagine, some people use a ten-day holiday to visit Cox’s Bazar, while others end up changing the history of the web!

Rasmus Lerdorf wasn’t far behind. Wanting to maintain his own personal webpage, he created PHP in 1994. What started out as a language to fulfill a small need soon became a valiant warrior of dynamic websites worldwide.

Around the same time, Guido van Rossum was pondering, “Does programming always have to mean flashy tricks and tough syntax? What if code could be as smooth as poetry?” In 1991, Python was born at his hands—and today, it’s the lifeblood of AI and data science.

In 1995, Japan’s Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto created Ruby—for the sheer joy of programmers. His thought: “If the programmer isn’t happy, the code won’t be happy either.” Truly, with Ruby’s rise came Ruby on Rails, which gave a whole new speed to the web world.

And what about Anders Hejlsberg at Microsoft? Around the year 2000, he created C#, pouring new colors into the Windows world. From gaming to corporate software, C# now reigns supreme everywhere.

All these code–poets together have built the foundation of today’s technology. From mobile apps to artificial intelligence, from cloud computing to the threads of the internet—everywhere you’ll find their signature. They’ve shown us that a few lines of code can change the world—and have proven that when creativity sparks, even a quiet afternoon in a lab can turn into the beginning of an epic.