P.J. Plauger was awarded Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award. He richly deserves it. There's his tremendous contribution to the C and C++ standardization projects, but I personally feel that his Programming on Purpose column for Computer Language was simply the best programming column ever written. It's the reason that I fell in love with that magazine, which I went on to join and eventually edit.

So Programming on Purpose is responsible for much of my career. But here's how I stack up to Plauger: a couple of months ago, when I was in Hawaii for the ECMA C# and C++/CLI standards meetings, I mentioned at lunch that there was a chance that my code might have booked the flights of the attendees. Plauger nodded and mentioned another item that was in the news: "Our software just landed on Mars." Point, set, and match to Dr. Plauger.