Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, John McCarthy, and Daniel McCracken

We lost four significant people from the computing world this year.

Steve Jobs needed no introduction. Everyone new him as that slightly crazy guy from Apple, the one who would show off new products while always wearing a black mock-turtleneck shirt.

Dennis Ritchie was well-known by the geeks. Articles comparing him to Steve Jobs were wrong: Ritchie co-created Unix and C somewhat before Steve Jobs founded Apple. Many languages (C++, Java, C#) are descendants of C. Linux, Android, Apple iOS, and Apple OSX are descendants of Unix.

John McCarthy was know by the true geeks. He built a lot of AI, and created a language called LISP. Modern languages (Python, Ruby, Scala, and even C# and C++) are beginning to incorporate ideas from the LISP language.

Daniel McCracken is the unsung hero of the group. He is unknown even among true geeks. His work predates the others (except McCarthy), and had a greater influence on the industry than possibly all of them. McCracken wrote books on FORTRAN and COBOL, books that were understandable and comprehensive. He made it possible for the very early programmers to learn their craft -- not just the syntax but the craft of programming.

The next time you write a "for" loop with the control variable named "i", or see a "for" loop with the control variable named "i", you can thank Daniel McCracken. It was his work that set that convention and taught the first set of programmers.