demigod

n. A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a major
role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or
known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a genuine
demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker community and
have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
(co-inventors of Unix and C ), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS ),
Larry Wall (inventor of Perl ), Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux ), and
most recently James Gosling (inventor of Java, NeWS , and GOSMACS ) and
Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python ). In their hearts of hearts, most
hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one
major software project has been driven to completion by the author's veiled
hopes of apotheosis. See also net.god , true-hacker , ubergeek. Since 1995
or so this term has been gradually displaced by ubergeek.

