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.
