From starting and owning businesses to creating languages, developers have traditionally been successful, there is practically no limit to what they can accomplish. We've gathered a list of who we think the most successful and influential developers have been.

Here's our Top 10:

#1 Bill Gates

Bill Gates is the most successful developer on the list. Gates, with the help of Steve Ballmer, created Microsoft in 1975 using his knowledge of development and programming. As the former CEO of Microsoft with a net worth of $79 billion, there is no disputing that Bill Gates knows what he's doing.

#2 Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak was a cofounder of Apple alongside Steve Jobs. Early on Wozniak was employed at Hewlett-Packard, where Jobs worked alongside him, creating mainframe computers. Woz was the technical brain of the two; he went on to single-handedly develop the Apple I in 1976. He also oversaw the design of the Apple II in 1977.

#3 Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was the first programmer. She's known for her work on the Analytical Engine, which is recognized as the first algorithm created with the intent to be processed by a computer. This means that Lovelace created the first ever computer program.

#4 Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is credited for pioneering the digital era. He created the C programming language, which influenced most modern programming languages and is still used today. Ritchie also co-created the UNIX OS.

#5 Mark Zuckerburg

When Mark Zuckerberg was 20 years old he created Facebook. At the start, Facebook was only for Harvard students, now it boasts 1.44 billion monthly active users. Now Zuckerberg is worth $34.8 billion and has acquired companies like Instagram and WhatsApp.

#6 Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin is a computer scientist who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He's owns 16% of google and has a net worth of $30 billion. Brin created a data mining system that eventually became Google.

#7 Lawrence Ellison

Lawrence Ellison was the CEO and co-founder of Oracle Corporation. Oracle is a database company that originally included databases for the CIA. Ellison has a net worth of $54 billion and is now the CTO and an executive chairman of Oracle.

#8 Larry Page

Larry Page is the second half of Google; he co-founded it with Sergey Brin. Page also owns 16% of google and has a net worth of $30 billion. Him and Brin met at Stanford and built Google in their dorm before finally launching it in a garage.

#9 Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds is a software engineer who was the driving force behind the development of Linux. In 2012 he was honored with the Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy of Finland due to his creation of a new open source OS for computers worldwide. Additionally he received the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award.

#10 Tim Berners Lee

Tim Berners Lee was the inventor of the World Wide Web. In 1989 he proposed an info management system. Later on Lee implemented the first successful communication between a HTTP client and server over the internet. Currently he oversees the Web's continued development as the director of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

If we left somebody out let us know who they are in the comments! There are a lot of role models in programming to look up to. Anything is possible in the tech world; make it a point to become a part of this list.

Source:
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Bill Gates, great success story but don't try exploring his kind of dropping out skills in Nigeria.

What works in the Western work may not work in Nigeria and he didn't just drop out, he had enough skills to survive the real world beyond the four walls of Harvard.

Well, one day I will get there shaa...

No Djikstra in the list?

Watchout for my name on that list in a couple years... M not joking