Famous or Not, Groundbreaker Award Winners Are All Community Builders Four developers from around the world were honored last month with Groundbreaker Awards at Oracle Code New York: Nebrass Lamouchi, Rafael Winterhalter, Carla De Bona, and Venkat Subramaniam. While Subramaniam is a celebrity among Java developers, Lamouchi, Winterhalter, and De Bona are all young and comparatively unknown. Their focus on community and mentorship, however, illustrates a core value among developers—one that rarely makes the news. Subramaniam remembers his mentors: the computer science professor in Chennai who made late-night house calls to talk about algorithms, for example, or Dave Thomas, who wrote The Pragmatic Programmer, coaching him on writing. “I only started speaking English at age 18, so the first people who had to read my books weren’t called editors, they were called victims,” Subramaniam said. What developer community do you belong to? Write me with your thoughts.
—Alexandra Weber Morales, Oracle Director of Developer Content