[2] Because Dr. Dobb's serves an audience of software developers, the Excellence in Programming Award is specifically intended to recognize resources for programmers: languages, code libraries, tutorial books, and so on.
Dr. Dobb's editor-at-large Michael Swaine wrote that C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup was "someone whose values, efforts, and achievements are an inspiration to all programmers."
Dr. Dobb's editor Jonathan Erickson cited Bruce Schneier's "many important contributions" to computer security, including the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms.
Erickson also noted that Schneier was the author of eight books, including Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C (ISBN 0471117099), which he termed "a seminal work for software developers.
Guy Steele did not receive the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming award for his work on a specific language, tool, or operating system, wrote editor Jonathan Erickson, "but for the breadth of his contributions over the years."
Erickson wrote that Chamberlin "reminds us that a mix of technology, innovation, vision, and cooperative spirit continue to be fundamental to advancement in software development.
Dr. Dobb's editor Jonathan Erickson outlined Anders Hejlsberg's contributions to the programming world by summarizing his work history: "Currently a distinguished engineer in Microsoft's developer division," Erickson wrote, "Hejlsberg is best known as author of Borland's Turbo Pascal, the ground-breaking development environment of the early 1980s, and chief architect of its successor, Delphi.
In his article announcing the Excellence in Programming Award winner for 2000, Dr. Dobb's editor Jonathan Erickson called Jon Bentley "one of the most respected and prolific researchers in the field of computer science."
"[14] Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language, and Donald Becker, chief investigator of the Beowulf Project, which achieved supercomputer performance using networks of inexpensive Linux-based PCs.
"To tackle the problem, Donald Becker and Thomas Sterling launched the Beowulf Project, a cluster computer consisting of high-performance PCs built from off-the-shelf components, connected via Ethernet, and running under Linux.
"[15] The “Gang of Four” – Richard Helm, Erich Gamma, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides – authors of Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.
"Along with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, Ronald L. Rivest is perhaps best known as an inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem," wrote Dr. Dobb's editor Jonathan Erickson.
"In developing the C++ Standard Template Library," wrote Dr. Dobb's editor Jonathan Erickson, Alexander Stepanov "has created a body of work that in all likelihood will touch most mainstream programmers for years to come...STL implements a programming model which provides an orthogonal view of data structures and algorithms, as opposed to object-oriented encapsulation.
Although the ideas behind STL are not new, it took someone with Alexander's vision, perseverance, and experience — along with the new generation of C++ tools — to turn the promise of generic programming into reality."