Computer Science SuperHeroes

Who would you say the all-time superheroes of Computer Science are? For me, it would have to be Donald Knuth for his formal notation on algorithm complexity, Mr. Dijkstra for his strong stance against the harmful goto, and Abelson&Sussman for authoring what is perhaps the greatest book on Computer Science.

You forgot Guido.

I’M GUIDO
SON OF A BITCH RUBY
RUBY IS PIG
DO YOU WANT REFLECTION?
DO YOU WANT GARBAGE COLLECTION?
RUBY IS PIG DISGUSTING
MATSUMOTO IS A MURDERER
FUCKING RUBY

We need a comic book.

>>1
Major superheroes: Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman
Other heroes: Edsger Dijkstra, Donald Knuth
Famous people: Guido van Rossum, Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Paul Graham
Fathers of the nation: Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, John McCarthy, Haskell Curry, John von Neumann

Villains who returned to the good side: John Backus

Heroes who were seduced by the dark side of the force: Guy Steele, Jr.

Villains: Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen

Retired villains: Bill Gates (retired from villain, now a better person)

Gerald Jay Sussman, also known as The Wizard. A superhero hiding his identity behind robe and a wizard hat. In his youth he went through The Ascension of Parentheses, which left a tattooed Seal of Parenthesis on his arm. Fighting using his enchanted Swiss Army Knife, he is capable of felling the most powerful foes. Invulnerable to the feared Forced Indentation attack.

>>5
You forgot
Supervillian: Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto creator of ruby

Andrew S. Tanenbaum creator of the minix operating system, and a bunch of excellent books on Computer Science and Operating Systems.

I’M LINUS
SON OF A BITCH MINIX
MINIX IS PIG
DO YOU WANT MICROKERNEL?
DO YOU WANT MINIMALISM?
MINIX IS PIG DISGUSTING
TANENBAUM IS A MURDERER
FUCKING MINIX

True story.

>>9
I lold so hard heheheh.

>>9
Andrew Tanenbaum is Joker to Linus Torvalds batman?

I'M RMS
SON OF A BITCH LINUX
LINUX IS PIG
DO YOU WANT MONOLITH?
DO YOU WANT GNU/HURD?
LINUX IS PIG DISGUSTING
LUNIX TARBALLS IS A MURDERER
FUCKING LINUX

I'M RASMUS LERDORF
SON OF A LARRY WALL
LARRY WALL IS PIG
DO YOU WANT SIGILS?
DO YOU WANT =~?
PERL IS PIG DISGUSTING
LARRY WALL IS A MURDERER
FUCKING CPAN

Other good heroes should include Relational elder E. Codd, Dragon lords Aho|Sethi|Ullman, Rob Pike and the rest of Plan 9 team

Villains: J. Gosling, B. Stroustrup, A. Hejlsberg.

>>13
hahhaa

Eccentric preacher: Larry Wall

>>1
Nonsense, goto is sometimes useful.

Show me a goto hater and I'll show you somebody who has never used assembly language (and is therefore a nub).

>>18
If you're using unconditional jmp you're doing it wrong. Jxx or GTFO

computer science killed computing

>>19
Gotos are usually combined with conditional statements in any programming language.

>>21
Usually, yes. But consider the computed goto, which is the most EXPERT solution to any dynamically-scalable problem.

>>22
I agree, though me experience with machine code was breif, It makes sense in general for your machine code to run from start  to end, and not jump around all over the place.

I think there was a performance gain as well, since in one FDE cycle you could combine both a goto and a if statement.

I could understand if you were doing a massive project in machine code, and you were using the gotos to arrange sections of your code in memory, but my old lecturer would argue that the program should have been written out in paper first before entry.