From strictly a programmatic standpoint, Bill Gates has a superior grasp of technical knowledge and how to do a "hands on" implementation of a system. He is going to return to Microsoft as a technology advisor and is highly regarded amongst MS engineers for his technical prowess.

After that Mark Zuckerberg would be the next best programmer. As others have said, he is actively involved with his top-level engineers in feature development and roll outs. It has been known that he has pulled all nighters with his chief engineers hacking out code and rolling out/troubleshooting new features

Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google based off of a school project they did but surprisingly, are not as technically minded as you think. A book recently came out by one of Google's first engineers that detail Larry and Sergey's technical ability as "research coders". Check this article out for more details:

It Turns Out Google Co-founders Larry Page And Sergy Brin Are Actually Pretty Lousy Coders

Steve Jobs was a brilliant marketer and salesman with a uncanny ability to understand the UX and design side of technical products before UX was a buzzword. But, in so far as actual technical knowledge (& that is the question, isn't it) he does not hold a candle to the others above.

My humble opinion is that all of these men are brilliant in their own way. 99% of us will not even come close their success - but then again 99% of us have no true idea of what they went through to attain their status. It takes a very special combination of sacrifice, passion, intelligence, fortitude and yes, obsession to start, nurture, grow and establish the kinds of companies these men founded.

asalimpo: Why is Linus Torvalds not on this List?
He's no enterprenuer but you can't/shudnt mention programming titans without him coming first.

toshodei:

You can always add him. What about Larry Ellison? Jack Dorsey? Jerry Yang?

asalimpo:
Linus isnt in d same class as those you mentioned. The artcle is a joke and an insult without the person who created d most popular open source application ever. He wrote d fastest version control software to host also - git?
Without Linus,they'd b no linux.
They'd b no android ,theyd b no ubuntu, debian or red hat.

Who is jack Dorsey?

toshodei:

Without Jack Dorsey, there will be no Twitter. Without Larry Ellison there will be no Java, no Android Apps. Without Jerry Yang, there will be no Yahoo, no Google, no YouTube.

asalimpo:
Those you mentioned arent in the same league as Linus. The artcle is a joke and an insult without the person who created d most popular open source application ever. He wrote d fastest version control software to host also - git?
Without Linus,they'd b no linux.
They'd b no android ,theyd b no ubuntu, debian or red hat.

Who is jack Dorsey?

toshodei:

Without Jack Dorsey, there will be no Twitter. Without Larry Ellison there will be no Java, no Android Apps. Without Jerry Yang, there will be no Yahoo, no Google, no YouTube.

asalimpo:

ok. Are we going to fight over this bf u admit tht linus is a greater impact on open source and tech history than anything bf?
There was java bf oracle bought sun. Java wudve still been. Oracle bought but ddnt invent java.
Without Gosling, they'd b no java.
- twitter grew from a group brain stormg session after which a prototype was created.
Facebook,linux,google grew more from programmer thought experiment tht wrked.
- yahoo's is just anoda web portal.
Twitter is just anoda successful web strtup.
- the impact of linux in computer history is collosal nothg comes close and it wasnt done thru a strtup.

uken73:
Guy, I think you got some of those names mixed up. You are right about Jack Dorsey & Jerry Yang rounding Yahoo. Larry Ellison is founder of Oracle Corp. Even though Oracle has bought Sun Microsystems, the original vendor of Java, James Gosling is the Inventor of Java. And Android would be attributed to Google and Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. YouTube however was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.

uken73: It's unfortunate that Linus is not an Entrepreneur and has not made the kind of money these other guys have made but as for the impact of his inputs, I think only Bill Gates can be a worthy comparison. I won't argue with someone who says he's more impactful than Bill though.

ejihand1:
Asalimbo, I like ur line of argument. Are you on whatsaap?

toshodei:

True but do u think that Java and YouTube would have been popular and would have been in the game this long (FOR FREE) if it wasnt for Larry Ellison and Google? If Yahoo wasn't making money with search engines, do u think that Google would have decided to make a search engine in the 1st place? Everything in life is a chain reaction to its predecessor. Think about Nairaland, Mr. Seun Osewa probably created Nairaland because he saw the idea somewhere on the internet. Now YM is doing the same because they saw Nairaland. Facebook saw MySpace. IrokoTV saw YouTube. Android saw iPhone which saw the Palm phone back in the days. Bill Gates saw Steve Jobs b4 he made a GUI. Steve Jobs (Steve Woz) saw Xerox and a computer back in a magazine created by someone that no one even remembers.

asalimpo:
Linus impact eclipse gate. In d third wrld, if not for piracy most ppl in 3rd wrld wouldnt b able to use a computer, or theyd b left with a stripped down budget os.
Full of monitorg spyware,reportg to microsoft.
Linus, did what the free software foundation struggled to do but failed miserably at i.e to create a free os. And because of linux version control took off, free software bcame popular, and alternatve free /open source organizations sprung up.Namely, Apache.
If linux didnt succeed, mysql ,php,perl wudve had a hard time gettg acceptance by younger generation of programmers. Wat wud they run on? Unix? Bsd? Php-apache-mysql-bsd? *yuck*.
Also windows was pushg its tech in this areas.
Even today, bsd is very unpopular.
Linux may not b popular on d desktop but elsewhere it is king.
Super computers, web servers, run linux.
What is d value of a typical linux distro ppl download for free?
Its estimate runs into billions of dollars.
A Linux distro is d highest grade free man made product anybody in d wrld has ever consumed-outside of free high quality education (which is only available in very few countries).
(this is a big claim )

toshodei:

Without Jack Dorsey, there will be no Twitter. Without Larry Ellison there will be no Java, no Android Apps. Without Jerry Yang, there will be no Yahoo, no Google, no YouTube.

uken73:
Well, on that light, I wont really argue with with you, but I'm not sure how Larry Ellison of Oracle really connects with Android Apps neither do I understand how Jerry Yang of Yahoo contribute to YouTube. I've never heard of Google videos, but I bet Google saw something special in YouTube before deciding to go for it even when they already had something. If they didn't I'm sure some other bigger coy (maybe Microsoft or Facebook) would have. Java & it's owning coy was doing farely well before Oracle came into the picture. Mind you, Sun Microsystem had Sun Solaris Os (a linux breed) which was mostly used by Telecoms Coys.

Laryokeke:


without Larry Ellison there will be no java? That's why I hardly come here.

olucurious: Always arguing and ranting while brothers in the western world are banging out codes and shipping products, moving light years ahead of us. chai! diaris god ooo!

davidsmith8900:

Android Apps are based off of Java. Did u watch the Oracle vs Google battle over Android Apps? Check this link ~> http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google . Jerry Yang (and Yahoo) made search engines profitable. What came n beat Yahoo in da search engine game? Google. Name the same company that from search engine had enough money to buy YouTube and make it da number 1 Video Hosting Site in the world? Google.

uken73:
True, Linus deserves respect. But our world doesn't give you much respect without seeing money on you.

asalimpo: @olucurious
that's a dumb statement u just made. Intellectuals will always argue things out.
Read about d arguments btw intuitionists and their opposites in the world of mathematics. It caused a split when set theory was first invented/discovered.
Or d flame wars btw d cult of emacs and the church of d beast (vi).