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Hall of fame 2002
Several industry icons join InfoWorld's Innovators Hall of Fame
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Tim Bray and the XML Working Group: XML
XML offers a way for programs to squeeze real meaning out of Web pages
through metadata -- now it has expanded all over the Internet and become a
core standard for doing business online. But for those who created XML, this
is all a pleasant surprise, says Tim Bray, who co-wrote the XML specification
and is currently CEO of knowledge management and visual mapping company
Antarcti.ca.
"We thought we were building something to enable smarter and faster Web
publishing, which indeed is one of the things XML is being used for. But as
anyone can see looking around, it's only one and a fairly small one of the
many places XML is being deployed. We had no idea of the magnitude or
intensity of what was kicking off here," says Bray.
The Working Group that created XML in 1996 and 1997 had 11 people,
including six "ringleaders": Jon Bosak, chair of the committee and, according
to Bray, the one who started the XML ball rolling; James Clark, committee
technical lead and "source of most of the good ideas"; Dan Connolly, the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) liaison; and Jean Paoli, C. M.
Sperberg-McQueen, and Bray, the XML spec writers. Now XML plumbing can
be found under the covers of Web infrastructure ranging from .Net to IBM
WebSphere and is becoming a foundation for much of the work being done
around Web services and other industry standards.
James Gosling: Java
Gosling isn't known as the "father of Java" for nothing: He was responsible for
creating the programming language that forms the basis of much of Sun's
vision of the future. Java provides tools to better link dynamic software
functions together, coming out of the need to coordinate applications,
content, and action in a processor-independent way. Although Java began in
1991 as a creation of the "Green Team" -- a 13-member group working on the
"Green Project," which sought to anticipate the next generation of computing
for Sun -- and officially emerged in 1995, it has become a major development
platform for online business. The next step is dealing with today's increasingly
complex systems and figuring out what role Java will play as technology and
the business world evolve. Gosling is currently a vice president and fellow at
Sun.
Anders Hejlsberg: C#
Hejlsberg, currently a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, has his hands in
several pies when it comes to Web services. As a chief designer of the
"component-oriented" C# language and as a participant in the design of Visual
Studio .Net and Visual J++, Hejlsberg was the one saddled with creating a
programming language to meet Sun's Java, offering developers another option
when writing Web-based services and software. Visual Studio .Net,
meanwhile, seeks to give developers the tools they need to build Web
services. Along with the .Net framework, Microsoft is leaning on Visual Studio
.Net to give it a leg-up in the Web services race. Hejlsberg is also the author
of Borland's Turbo Pascal and Delphi, both tools designed to help streamline
the software-writing process.
Linus Torvalds: Linux
The rise of Linux began not just with Torvalds' writing of the Linux kernel in
1991 but also with his promotion of a "new" distribution model: free access to
the code. From there, programmers turned the Unix clone into a desktop
platform and more, adding patches and new lines of code to expand its
capabilities and reliability. What began as a quiet revolution among developers
is moving steadily into the enterprise world as Linux continues to grow and
present a viable option for those seeking something other than proprietary
software. And along the way, Torvalds, now working at Transmeta, has
become something of a cult hero to those in the free-software community.
John Crawford - Intel's processor pioneer strikes gold again
Mike Lazaridis - BlackBerry genius shares simple secret of success: Listen to your customers
Andy Mendelsohn - Breaking new ground is old hat for Oracle's long-time visionary database developer
Dave Moellenhoff - ASP founder predicts the end of software as we know it
Larry Page and Sergey Brin - The Internet's most famous pair of Ph.D.s are still striving to make data more accessible
Clifford Neuman - For Kerberos co-author, security hasn't lost its allure
Ray Ozzie - Notes inventor envisions peer-to-peer technology supplanting e-mail
Vivek Ranadivé - Real-time computing pioneer is taking his message to the enterprise masses
Dave Winer - SOAP co-author strives for simplicity and drives decentralization
Mark Lucovsky - The brains behind HailStorm sees Web services as a hub for simplifying busy lives
Back to 2002 Technology Innovators
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Related Links |
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Hall of fame 2002 - Several industry icons join InfoWorld's Innovators Hall of Fame |
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Ones to Watch 2002 - These up-and-comers are developing the technologies that will matter most in the coming months |
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Where are they now? - Since the 2000 Ones to Watch were named, many dot-coms imploded and the economy
soured. How have these technological talents fared? |
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