[jstuxx]

Linus Torvalds isn't really something that great. He copied an existing kernel design which had a full open API specification, it's not like he reverse engineered MS-DOS whose API was fully closed off and secret. Linus didn't bring anything new to the world, Linux is a clone of UNIX, everything that has been added to Linux was originally developed by Sun or BSD developers and then cloned for Linux.

A good programmer in my opinion is not someone who can code in C and ASM and then brag about how he/she doesn't use C++ or whatever. A good programmer is also a designer, who can bring a new design to the world which will still be used 50 years later and even after the death of the original programmer. Thus Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and the others should be in the list of the best programmers of all time not Linus Torvalds.