List of software authors

Software author, refers to a person who writes computer software (programs). This list is primarily a list of individuals rather than businesses, companies or corporations who have produced innovative, early or otherwise notable computer software for commercial or free distribution.

Early examples

• John Backus — FORTRAN compiler
• C.A.R. Hoare — ALGOL compiler
• Grace Hopper — COBOL compiler
• Ada Lovelace — Analytical Engine
• Christopher Strachey — draughts playing program
• Alan Turing — provably correct program
• Niklaus Wirth — Pascal compiler

General

• Tim Berners-Lee — inventor of the World Wide Web
• Jean-François Groff — contributor to the Valour project, co-developer of the World Wide Web
• Richard Stallman — Emacs, GCC, GDB, founder and pioneer of the GNU Project, terminal-independent I/O pioneer on ITS, Lisp machine manual (chineual)

Mainframe

• Ken Dakin — author of OLIVER (CICS interactive test/debug)
• Dick Goran, author of DUCS, co-author of DOCS, owner of CFS, Inc.
• Leigh Lundin — owner of III, designer of emulators, compilers, and OS, author of Aardvark, Valour, Virtue, Fx, Rexx libraries, WestiTam, DUCS Remote, co-author of DOCS, The Spooler, and WDU
• Boyd Munro — Australian developer of GRASP, owner of SDI, one of the earliest software development companies
• Steve O'Donnell — founder of GOAL Systems, lead developer of WDU, Westi, creater of independent DOS utilities, developer of Prompt
• Don Stoneman — original developer of The Spooler

Personal computer

• James Brausch — author of Glyphius and MuVar
• Dan Bricklin — author of wikicalc and Visicalc
• Bill Gates — MSDOS
• Dan Gookin — author of ...for Dummies books
• Neil J. Gunther — author of PDQ (Pretty Damn Quick) performance modeling program
• Andy Rathbone — author of ...for Dummies books
• Colin Simpson — author of CircuitLogix and RoboLogix simulation software
• Kenneth Walton — author of DeepAnalysis and founder of HammerTap

See also

• List of programming language researchers
• Free software