Dr. Dobb's Digest March 2009

Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award


Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award is annually bestowed on individuals who, in the spirit of innovation and cooperation, have made significant contributions to the advancement of software development. The first award was given out in 1995, recognizing Alexander Stepanov, for his work on the C++ Standard Template Library, and Linus Torvalds, for creating Linux.

The recipient of the 2009 award is one of the world's foremost experts on C++ software development -- Scott Meyers. In addition to providing training and consulting services to clients worldwide, Scott is author of the best-selling Effective C++ book series -- Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL), wrote and designed the innovative Effective C++ CD, is consulting editor for Addison Wesley's Effective Software Development Series, and was a founding member of the Advisory Board for The C++ Source. He's written for numerous magazines, including Dr. Dobb's Journal, the C/C++ Users Journal, and IEEE Software.

He has also served as a technical advisor to several start-up companies. A programmer since 1972, Scott holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Brown University.

Join us in congratulating Scott for being this year's recipient, and thanking him for his many contributions to the art and science of software development.

Past Award Recipients

The Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award is annually bestowed on individuals who, in the spirit of innovation and cooperation, have made significant contributions to the advancement of software development. Past recipients include:

  • Alexander Stepanov, for his work on the C++ Standard Template Library.
  • Linus Torvalds, a name synonymous with Linux.
  • Larry Wall, author of Perl.
  • James Gosling, chief architect of Java.
  • Ronald Rivest, educator, author, and cryptographer.
  • Gary Kildall, for his work in operating systems, programming languages, and user interfaces.
  • Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, John Vlissides, and Ralph Johnson, authors of Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.
  • Guido van Rossum, Python's creator.
  • Donald Becker, Linux networking contributor and chief investigator of the Beowulf Project.
  • Jon Bentley, computer science author and researcher.
  • Anders Hejlsberg, developer of Turbo Pascal and architect of C# and the .NET Framework.
  • Adele Goldberg and Dan Ingalls, pioneers in Smalltalk and object-oriented programming.
  • Don Chamberlin, a database researcher and coauthor of SQL.
  • P.J. Plauger, a longtime champion of the C/C++ programming languages.
  • Guy L. Steele, for a broad range of contributions to software development.
  • Grady Booch, for his contributions to object-oriented programming, software architecture, and modeling.
  • Bruce Schneier, for his contributions to computer security.
  • Bjarne Stroustrup, for creating and supporting the C++ programming language.