Code Pioneers — the people behind the languages

"Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way, Americans invariably mangle it. I am therefore known by value in Europe and by reference in America."

Wrote Pascal to teach students structured programming. Won the Turing Award in 1984. His textbook "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" trained two generations.

→ Where Miha started.

At Bell Labs created C (1972) and co-created Unix with Ken Thompson. Without him, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android — nothing would exist as we know it. Died one week after Steve Jobs. The world barely noticed. We should have.

→ Every device you own runs on his work.

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

Added classes to C in 1979 at Bell Labs because Simula was too slow and BCPL too primitive. Result: game engines, browsers, Google, financial systems, Mars rovers.

→ Still answers e-mails from students. Personally.

At Sun Microsystems in 1991 led the team that built Java for set-top boxes. The web came along — "write once, run anywhere" became the promise of a generation. Banks, Android, Minecraft.

→ Java still powers 3 billion devices.

Built Python over Christmas 1989 as a hobby. Named it after Monty Python. Stepped down as "BDFL" (Benevolent Dictator For Life) in 2018 because Twitter got too tiring. Today: most-taught language on Earth.

→ AI revolution speaks Python.

Wrote JavaScript in 10 days in May 1995 at Netscape. Was supposed to be a "Scheme in the browser" — management said "make it look like Java." Half the internet runs on those 10 days.

→ Later co-founded Mozilla and Brave browser.

Wrote Turbo Pascal alone in his student days — sold to Borland, became a phenomenon. Then C# at Microsoft. Then TypeScript — which we write LOVE Coin in. Four legendary languages from one mind.

→ If you've ever typed code, you've probably typed his.

Started Rust as a side project at Mozilla in 2006 after his elevator broke down because of a memory bug in C++. Memory safety without garbage collection. Now powers Soroban, Solana, Polkadot, parts of Linux, Windows, Android.

→ A broken elevator that saved billions in security bugs.

Co-created Move at Meta's Diem project to fix Solidity's biggest pain: assets that disappear or duplicate by accident. In Move, a coin is a resource — you can't accidentally lose it. Sui and Aptos run on it.

→ Get out the way — Move, in a literal sense.

Co-founded Ethereum with Vitalik. Wrote Solidity in 2014 and the Yellow Paper that formally defined EVM. Later founded Polkadot. Without Solidity, no DeFi as we know it.

→ $100B+ TVL across EVM chains today.

Wrote the world's first computer program — for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a machine that was never built in her lifetime. She saw 180 years into the future. Languages owe her everything.

→ Daughter of Lord Byron. Mother of code.

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is: We've always done it this way."

US Navy admiral. Invented the first compiler (1952) — the idea that machines could translate human-readable code. Coined the term "debugging" after literally pulling a moth out of a relay.

→ Without her, no high-level languages exist.