Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

Quiz Questions

1. Bertrand Meyer

Initial designer of the Eiffel language and Design by Contract development method. Currently a Professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan

2. Dorothea Puente

The “Death House Landlady” ran a Sacramento boarding house in the ’80s and murdered at least 9 tenants before claiming their Social Security

3. John Christie

Killed 8 women at 10 Rillington Place, London. Arrested after new tenants tracing an unpleasant odour peeled off the kitchen wallpaper to reveal a corpse

4. Andrei Chikatilo

The “Butcher of Rostov” murdered and mutilated more than 50 people, mostly small children. He was told as a child that villagers had eaten his brother

5. John Mauchly

Co-designed the first electronic general-purpose computer and created Short Code, the first programming language actually used on a computer

6. Gerald Jay Sussman

Invented the Scheme programming language with Guy L. Steele Jr. and involved in MIT’s AI research. Member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston

7. Anatoly Onoprienko

“The Terminator” killed entire families at point-blank range with a shotgun before setting the house alight; “To me, killing people is like ripping up a duvet”

8. Jean E. Sammet

Established much of the design of COBOL in two weeks along with five other programmers, and developed FORMAC, an early computer algebra system

9. Guido van Rossum

Created the Python programming language in 1989 to keep busy while his office was closed for Christmas, naming it after Monty Python’s Flying Circus

10. Randy Kraft

This programmer (not known to have invented any languages) was convicted of killing 16 young men, but kept a cryptic “scorecard” with 61 entries