An article at JavaLobby offers high praise to CAD programming legend Mike Riddle as a way of introducing a new program for Java programming beginners.
Mike Riddle created what became known AutoCAD. It's a long story, but he sold his interests in the program to John Walker and the other founders of Autodesk, who turned the program into the behemoth it is today. (For more on Mike Riddle and Autodesk, check John Walker's book on the early years of Autodesk, “The Autodesk File.”) Mike then went on to found Evolution Computing, and created a product called FastCAD, written in Assembly Language. The product is still sold and supported, and still has loyal users.
“[Mike Riddle] was endlessly patient with my endless stream of questions,” writes Rick Ross. “I think he realized I was unusually smitten by the programming bug, and I was enormously grateful for the deep insights he shared with me. As is typical of very many people who have gained wisdom through experience, Mike would often answer a question with a question. He was able to direct a discussion away from trivial, surface-level issues into the more interesting and fundamental underlying problems that were really at stake. Mike was the type of guy who could teach you how to solve a whole family of problems by drilling into the root causes of those problems, and his focus on adopting the right perspective and approach provided me an invaluable example in those early days of my career as a developer.”
“You may have the opportunity to be the Mike Riddle in someone else's life,” Ross continues, “and I believe that the investments you make in helping others to learn Java can help keep the energy and quality of the Java community head and shoulders above any other.”
If you'd like to meet Mike Riddle and other industry legends, consider attending COFES 2005; Mike attends every year.