Beard in it. He does, he doesn't.

Is a programmer who has a beard a better coder? We don’t know. People who brag about their facial hair will probably argue that they do. Proponents of a smooth face will argue quite the opposite. I would like to write: the point of view depends on the degree of shaving. In this context, it is worth considering who belongs to one group and who belongs to the other. This is worth showing by the example of the gentlemen who have made a huge contribution to the development of it. Our thorough, deep analysis, unfortunately, not supported by any scientific research, but rather supported by observation and “folk wisdom” confirmed that three groups with different degrees of splendor of vegetation can be distinguished here.

Promoters of the idea of open source software

From the widely available photos it is clear that by far the biggest supporters of Brody are the promoters of the idea of open source software. It may be a generational issue, but is it really? As you can see, the gentlemen of this group prefer a long and lush beard, which definitely adds to their seriousness and nobility. The beard can also be a symbol of a huge commitment to the IT world. The promoters of the idea of open source software are so busy that they do not have time to shave.

Ken Coar

Ken coar is not only a great programmer who had a great contribution to the creation of the Apache Software Foundation, but also the owner of a very substantial beard. At once it should be emphasized that this is not at all some kind of beard, but precise, carefully hatched. It’s a beard whose message is clear: I know what I’m doing, I’m great at this job, I’m not just coding, I’m putting great ideas into practice. And that piercing look!

Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman is a legend and a man of many talents: a great hacker and a very talented organizer who, among other things, founded the GNU project and the free software foundation. A careful observer will probably not miss the fact that Stallman is also a proud owner of a very long and extremely thick beard. However, it is not a very precisely cut, tamed beard. Oh, no! It wouldn’t be like Stallman, a man who is defiant and walks his own path. No wonder, then, that his facial hair also seems to follow its own paths and in every direction. The beard here perfectly reflects the character of the owner.

Language creators

A little less restrained in growing facial hair are the creators of programming languages. Yes, they have beards, but this growth is much smaller than in the case of representatives of the previous group. There is more regularity, precision in these beards, their growth seems very organized. There’s no room here for randomness, for blindly searching. Each hair has its task as each element of the programming language.

Dennis Ritchie

Dennis macalistair Ritchie had by far the rarest facial hair in our group. It is the beard that witnessed the birth of the C language and the UNIX operating system. You can immediately see that it was an interesting combination of slightly inanimate elements of the beard with a precise, regular shape of the beard.

James Gosling

James Gosling is the father of Java and the author of the first version of the virtual machine. A man of success, as evidenced by the shape of his beard-the letter ” V ” like Victoria. In short, Gosling’s face is the face of the winner. Beard becomes in his case a subtle message about the professional success of the creator of Java.

Bjarne Stroustrup

It turns out that even the history of one of the most popular programming languages, namely C++, could not do without a beard. It was the Dane Bjarne Stroustrup who developed C++ from C. As we can easily see, we are dealing here with a rather “frugal”, even inconspicuous, one to which the owner does not seem particularly attached. No wonder, then, that in the photographs of later years Bjarne began to appear more and more often with an extremely smooth face, without a trace of facial hair.

John McCarthy

John McCarthy is the creator of the lisp language, as well as the author of the term “artificial intelligence” (AI), the winner of the Turing Prize, the owner of a very elegant beard. It’s not too small, it’s not too big, it’s just right. A neatly trimmed beard with no room for randomness.

Framework developers

It is not known why, but frameworkers are not fond of facial hair. Looking at the photos of representatives of this group of IT specialists, you can easily see that most often they have smooth faces, some of them only decide on a very small, at most two-day beard. Perhaps they see the beard as a hindrance, a problem that often has to be faced, nurturing it and combing it. And frameworks are, as you know, development platforms that are supposed to facilitate the work of the encoder, eliminate repetitive, but burdensome and tedious activities. Since the frameworkers focus on eliminating obstacles, they will not grow such obstacles on the face. Even if they are representatives of the younger generation of developers, they are definitely alien to such a popular style of urban lumberjack in recent years.

Fabien Potencier

Fabien potencier is the author of the Symfony framework, written in PHP. As you can see, he is not a supporter of the beard, but he also does not identify with the wing of completely smooth authors of development platforms. Closer to him to the representatives of the authors of programming languages, which subtly emphasizes the two-day beard.

Rod Johnson

Australian developer Rod Johnson, who is credited with creating the spring framework, at first glance seems to be a representative of the typically smooth fathers of development platforms. Nothing more wrong! Don’t let his smooth face mislead you. In fact, he is closer to Fabien potencier and to the group of authors of programming languages than to the self-respecting authors of frameworks. Just look at his Twitter profile picture. Johnson’s got a beard! Small, but still.

Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison

Tandem, which is responsible for creating the Django platform, an open source framework for Python. As you can see from the above photos, both gentlemen are united not only by a passion for new solutions, but also by a passion for a clean-shaven face.

David Heinemeier Hansson

Danish programmer, father of Ruby on rails, member of the well-known group 37signals. He also apparently puts on facilitation not only in programming, but also in the matter of facial hair, giving up any beard. If David already appears with facial hair in the photos, then there we are dealing with a rather delicate marking of facial hair in the form of one-day facial hair.

You can learn more about these and several other characters from our article “10 best programmers in history”.

Now the question for you, dear readers-programmers: how many of you have a beard? Put your hands up!