Donald Knuth is still alive...

He would get my vote in this rather ambiguous impromptu poll.

Also, name one modern engineer who works on projects alone?

It is an exceptionally meaningless concept if you ask me.

Carmack was a pioneer in the field of computer graphics. Not saying he isn't good, but it it weren't for guys like Jim Blinn, Edwin Catmull and many others, I doubt that we would be talking about Doom today.

You're right. All bow to the mighty Charles Babagge!

Engineering is a very broad subject. If anything, I think software engineering are the most forgiving engineering field. If you miscalculate, the worst thing that could happen is your app crashes and you reboot. Try that with space engineering, civil engineering. You miscalculate, people's lives are in jeopardy. The whole constructions would collapse, and the space shuttle would explode.

To say John Carmack is the "Best Engineer" is deification of a popular figure, not that much different than those who think that Steve Jobs built Apple. As many have voiced out here, there are plenty of great minds around that you will most likely never hear about them ever in your entire life. The people who designed the Mars robot, the people who calculated the trajectory of landing a shuttle in space, the people who build highways and great bridges across the earth, railway systems, tons of them.

I think Ivan Sutherland beats out John Carmack. Carmack may have been a pioneer in computer graphics, but Sutherland arguably *invented* computer graphics, not to mention taught graphics to people like John Warnock, Jim Clark, Ed Catmull and Alan Kay.

Engineering is a very broad subject. If anything, I think software engineering are the most forgiving engineering field. If you miscalculate, the worst thing that could happen is your app crashes and you reboot. Try that with space engineering, civil engineering. You miscalculate, people's lives are in jeopardy. The whole constructions would collapse, and the space shuttle would explode.

This is what I say all the time.

The whole constructions would collapse, and the space shuttle would explode.

you would be surprised how much things can be off in construction, and still work without issues, just cause an architect draws something one way, doesn't exactly mean it'll end up that way.

The whole constructions would collapse, and the space shuttle would explode.

you would be surprised how much things can be off in construction, and still work without issues, just cause an architect draws something one way, doesn't exactly mean it'll end up that way.

Speaking for at least civil engineering, this is exactly true. I always wondered, however, how much pressure the structural engineer endures when he has to give the thumbs up/down on whether that pile for the new bridge/building that is off by 2' is going to be a problem, or worth the ungodly amount of money to tear it all up and redo it...

Also, for the OP, my vote is Dijkstra. Or, if we widen the definition away from "modern software engineering", then Turing, with honorable mentions to Von Neuman and Shannon.

Engineering is a very broad subject. If anything, I think software engineering are the most forgiving engineering field. If you miscalculate, the worst thing that could happen is your app crashes and you reboot.

Try telling that to a software engineer working in finances, medical equipment, or aerospace. Sure, in game development the worst thing that happens is some nut job loses it and offs himself or someone else in the very far edge case, while the majority of the time they just restart the app. Not so in many many other fields involving software.

This is part of the reason why I got out of weapons development.

Donald Knuth is still alive...

He would get my vote in this rather ambiguous impromptu poll.

Donald Knuth is absolutely, definitely, positively 100% not an engineer. He's a computer scientist which is not the same thing. Not at all the same thing.

As for Carmack, I don't get the fandom. He's a smart guy for sure, and extremely productive, but frankly he's done very little of note in the past decade and some. His reputation for brilliance comes largely from work he did in his 20s, but recently? Virtual texturing was a cool idea but ultimately a footnote with a lot of practical issues. The recent idTechs have been mediocre systems with minimal licensing interest, the last really good id game was Q3A, and the dude's been busy chasing down hobbies in rocketry and now VR. Sorry but he's a historical figure in the field.

Elon Musk isn't an engineer, he's more of a technically savvy businessman.

I think most of the brilliant software engineers don't tend to enjoy the pleasure of widespread fame, not anymore. Some of the guys who take time to be public with their work get recognition at least within the field, but I struggle to pin down any singular person as really instrumental. There are a lot of geniuses in this line of work and most of the good companies know how to hire three of them and then let them do their thing.