READ Famous Programmers from the United States

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List of notable or famous programmers from the United States, with bios and photos, including the top programmers born in the United States and even some popular programmers who immigrated to the United States. If you're trying to find out the names of famous American programmers then this list is the perfect resource for you. These programmers are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known programmer from the United States is included when available.

List is made up of people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

This historic programmers from the United States list can help answer the questions "Who are some American programmers of note?" and "Who are the most famous programmers from the United States?" These prominent programmers of the United States may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected American programmers.

Use this list of renowned American programmers to discover some new programmers that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page. (319 items)

1
Bill Gates is listed (or ranked) 1 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 62 William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. Gates originally established his reputation as the ...more

2
Mark Zuckerberg is listed (or ranked) 2 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 33 Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. Zuckerberg was made ...more

3
Paul Allen is listed (or ranked) 3 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 65 Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, investor, software engineer, humanitarian, and philanthropist. Alongside Bill Gates, Allen co-founded ...more

4
Steve Wozniak is listed (or ranked) 4 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 67 Stephen Gary "Steve" Wozniak, known as "Woz", is an American inventor, electronics engineer, and computer programmer who co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and Ronald ...more

5
Grace Hopper is listed (or ranked) 5 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 86 (1906-1992) Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944, and invented the first ...more

6
Rob Zombie is listed (or ranked) 6 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 53 Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He rose to prominence as a founding member of the band White Zombie which formed in the mid-1980s and rose to ...more

7
Charles Simonyi is listed (or ranked) 7 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 69 Charles Simonyi, son of Károly Simonyi, is a Hungarian-American computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft's application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft's ...more

8
Donald Knuth is listed (or ranked) 8 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 80 Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. ...more

9
Bill Joy is listed (or ranked) 9 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 63 William Nelson "Bill" Joy is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andreas von Bechtolsheim, and served as ...more

10
Marc Andreessen is listed (or ranked) 10 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 46 Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is best known as coauthor of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser; as cofounder of Netscape ...more

11
Cem Kaner is listed (or ranked) 11 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Cem Kaner J.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology, and the Director of Florida Tech's Center for Software Testing Education & Research since ...more

12
Pierre Omidyar is listed (or ranked) 12 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 50 Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of the eBay auction site. He became a billionaire at the age of 31 with ...more

13
James Gosling is listed (or ranked) 13 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 62 James Arthur Gosling, OC is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.

14
Phil Katz is listed (or ranked) 14 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 38 (1962-2000) Phillip Walter Katz was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the Zip file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files that ran under ...more

15
John D. Carmack is listed (or ranked) 15 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 47 John D. Carmack is an American game programmer and the co-founder of Id Software. Carmack was the lead programmer of the Id video games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage and ...more

16
Jacob Appelbaum is listed (or ranked) 16 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 35 Appelbaum is a Staff Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on computer security and privacy with a ...more

17
Jeff Daly is listed (or ranked) 17 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 42

18
Ken Thompson is listed (or ranked) 18 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 75 Kenneth "Ken" Thompson, commonly referred to as ken in hacker circles, is an American pioneer of computer science. Having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career, Thompson designed ...more

19
Joel Spolsky is listed (or ranked) 19 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 53 Avram Joel Spolsky is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of Joel on Software, a blog on software development, and the creator of the product management software Trello. He was a ...more

20
Richard Garriott is listed (or ranked) 20 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 56 Richard Garriott de Cayeux is a video game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa. A well-known figure in the ...more

21
Todd Rundgren is listed (or ranked) 21 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 69 Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop star, supported by the certified gold solo double ...more

22
Daniel Kottke is listed (or ranked) 22 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 64 Daniel Kottke is an American computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple Inc.

23
Larry Wall is listed (or ranked) 23 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 63 Larry Wall is a computer programmer and author, most widely known as the creator of the Perl programming language.

24
Marshall Kirk McKusick is listed (or ranked) 24 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 64 Marshall Kirk McKusick is a computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. He was president of the USENIX Association from 1990 to 1992 ...more

25
Eric Allman is listed (or ranked) 25 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 62 Eric Paul Allman is an American computer programmer who developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. In 1998, Allman co-founded the company ...more

26
Ric Weiland is listed (or ranked) 26 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 53 (1953-2006) Richard W. "Ric" Weiland was a computer software pioneer and philanthropist. He was one of the first five employees of Microsoft Corporation.

27
Tim Schafer is listed (or ranked) 27 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 50 Timothy John Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer ...more

28
Virgil Griffith is listed (or ranked) 28 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 35 Virgil Griffith, also known as Romanpoet, is an American software application writer, known for his creation of WikiScanner and the lawsuits filed against him by Blackboard Inc. in 2003. He has ...more

29
Andrew Fluegelman is listed (or ranked) 29 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 42 (1943-1985) Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman was a publisher, photographer, programmer and attorney best known as a pioneer of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing. He was also ...more

30
Scott A. Jones is listed (or ranked) 30 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 58 Scott A. Jones is an American inventor. Scott graduated with honors from Indiana University in 1984, receiving a bachelor of science degree in computer science.

31
Philip Gale is listed (or ranked) 31 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 20 (1978-1998) Philip Gale was an American pioneering Internet software developer, computer prodigy, and sophomore student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was notable for having written Total ...more

32
P.W. Bill Bailey III is listed (or ranked) 32 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 70

33
Earl Levine is listed (or ranked) 33 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Earl Levine developed streaming media and audio watermarking technologies during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. He worked at VXtreme until its acquisition by Microsoft. Following that he ...more

34
O. Arthur Stiennon is listed (or ranked) 34 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 84 (1919-2003) Dr. O. Arthur Stiennon, Jr. was a clinical radiologist, inventor, radiation treatment pioneer, software and real estate developer in Madison, Wisconsin. He attended the University of ...more

35
Sid Meier is listed (or ranked) 35 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 64 Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian-American programmer, designer and producer of several popular strategy video games and simulation video games, most notably Civilization. Meier ...more

36
Mark Robbins is listed (or ranked) 36 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States

37
Richard Stallman is listed (or ranked) 37 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 65 Richard Matthew Stallman, often known by his initials, rms, is a software freedom activist and computer programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in a manner such that its users ...more

38
Ron Gilbert is listed (or ranked) 38 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 54 Ron Gilbert is an American video-game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey ...more

39
Danielle Bunten Berry is listed (or ranked) 39 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
Dec. at 49 (1949-1998) Danielle Bunten Berry, born Daniel Paul Bunten, and also known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game M.U.L.E., and 1984's The Seven Cities of Gold. ...more

40
Sean Egan is listed (or ranked) 40 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 35 Sean Egan is a software engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Talk and is currently working on Google Maps. He is the former project leader of Pidgin, a popular instant messaging client. ...more

41
Richard Brodie is listed (or ranked) 41 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 58 Richard Brodie appeared in the 2007 film The Grand.

42
Robert Tappan Morris is listed (or ranked) 42 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 52 Robert Tappan Morris is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet, and for ...more

43
Tim Sweeney is listed (or ranked) 43 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 48 Tim Sweeney, born in 1970, is an American computer game programmer and the founder of Epic Games, being best known for his work on ZZT and the Unreal Engine. Sweeney established Epic as a ...more

44
Tsutomu Shimomura is listed (or ranked) 44 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 53 Tsutomu Shimomura is an American physicist and computer security expert. He is known for helping the FBI track and arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick. Shimomura is currently CEO and CTO of Neofocal ...more

45
Hans Reiser is listed (or ranked) 45 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 54 Hans Thomas Reiser is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer. He is the creator and primary developer of the ReiserFS computer file system, which is contained ...more

46
Joshua Bloch is listed (or ranked) 46 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 56 Joshua J. Bloch is a software engineer and a technology author, formerly employed at Sun Microsystems and Google. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, ...more

47
Jack Dongarra is listed (or ranked) 47 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 67 Jack J. Dongarra is an American University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee. He holds the ...more

48
Richard Wallace is listed (or ranked) 48 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 58 Richard S. Wallace is an American author of AIML and Botmaster of A.L.I.C.E.. He is also the founder of the A.L.I.C.E Artificial Intelligence Foundation. Dr. Wallace's work has appeared in the ...more

49
Dan Bricklin is listed (or ranked) 49 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 66 Daniel Singer "Dan" Bricklin, often referred to as “The Father of the Spreadsheet”, is the American co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded ...more

50
Eric S. Raymond is listed (or ranked) 50 on the list Famous Programmers from the United States
age 60 Eric Steven Raymond, often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, author of the widely cited 1997 essay, and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar and other works, and open ...more