Linus Torvalds has topped the list to top ten most influential programmers. However, Nick Halstead who conducted the poll did not agree with the result, saying "Linus has done us all a great favour in creating a open source version of unix which has spawned many great distributions but more influential than Dennis Ritchie? Linux would not be possible without ‘C’ and the creation of a whole new programming language that has been fundamental in so many of the system we now use is far more important than copying something that already existed."

While Rasums Lerdorf was fifth on the list, Andi Gutmas and ZeevSuraski of Zend fame managed to get only five and three votes, respectively. The complete list is as follows:

• 1. Linus Torvalds
• 2. Alan Turing
• 3. Dennis Ritchie
• 4. Donald Knuth
• 5. Rasmus Lerdorf
• 6. John Carmack
• 7. Bill Gates
• 8. Richard Stallman
• 9. Tim Berners-Lee
• 10. Bjarne Stroustrup