Top 10 Influential (and Rich) Programming Legends

by Salman Ul Haq | July 31, 2009

I have written before about faces behind popular programming languages and all seemed geeks of their times! (and their time hasn’t yet passed!). So how much money do programmers make? Or to be specific, top programmers? the ones who created programming languages or used it to achieve phenomenal success (like Google). Here is a list of 10 persons who made great bucks in the Programming world.

1) Larry Page (of course! :p)
Co Founder of Google and 6th richest in America and 27th Richest Billionaire in the World (Forbes)

2) Sergey Brin

Co Founder of Google and 28th Richest Billionaire in the World (Forbes)

3) Tim Berners Lee (Most influential but not as wealthy as Googlers)

Claim to fame: Creator of WorldWideWeb!

4) Matt MullenWeg

Creator of the most popular OpenSource Blogging platform Wordpress. He is 25 now.

5) Rasmus Lerdorf

Creator of the language that runs 34% of websites today!

6) James Gosling

Claim to Influence: Creator of Java

7) Linus Torvalds

Creator of the popular OpenSource OS Linux

Dennis Ritchie

Creator of C Language and key Developer of UNIX OS

9) Bjarne Stroustrup

Claim to Fame & Influence: Creator of C++

10) Bram Cohen

Creator of torrent P2P protocol. Thanks to him for millions of pirated downloads!

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James Vince

Omg Linus is 7th... 7th man wtf, He created the best operating system the world has ever seen (as of the time of posting). You put him after the creator of wordpress OMFG wordpress ir more substantial to you then the frickin Linux Kernel, whatever men your choice. Rasmus Lerdorf... There would be no PHP without Linux, 90% of PHP servings are served from LAMP. Jesus man, Linus should be at least 3rd in my humble opinion.

msuh

These are just numbers :) It's NOT grading depending upon the importance of each one of them.

naveen1080

very good information.. better to keep a link to download these images.

SAJAD KARIM

Admin Plz also mention my name in the above Legends List
..... :D

Milind Phadke

Excellent information. If these people would not have invented computer related stuff, the world would have been totally different. Thanks to them.

Top 10 Influential (and Rich) Programming Legends

1) Larry Page (of course! :p) Co Founder of Google and 6th richest in America and 27th Richest Billionaire in the World (Forbes)

2) Sergey Brin Co Founder of Google and 28th Richest Billionaire in the World (Forbes)

3) Tim Berners Lee (Most influential but not as wealthy as Googlers) Claim to fame: Creator of WorldWideWeb!

4) Matt MullenWeg Creator of the most popular OpenSource Blogging platform Wordpress. He is 25 now.

5) Rasmus Lerdorf Creator of the language that runs 34% of websites today!

6) James Gosling Claim to Influence: Creator of Java

7) Linus Torvalds Creator of the popular OpenSource OS Linux

Dennis Ritchie Creator of C Language and key Developer of UNIX OS

9) Bjarne Stroustrup Claim to Fame & Influence: Creator of C++

10) Bram Cohen Creator of torrent P2P protocol. Thanks to him for millions of pirated downloads!