Comment by techplex

My dad — for curiosity and creativity, and for teaching me to go after what I want rather than assuming something can't be done.

Bryan Cantrill — for shaping how I think about building productive engineering teams, especially teams working at the messy and fascinating interface between hardware and software.

Alan Kay and Seymour Papert — for changing how I think about computers, education, and learning. The best tools don't just give people answers; they give people an environment where they can explore, experiment, and develop their own understanding.

Paul Akers, Norm O'Hara, and Ryan Tierney — for showing what Lean can look like when it leaves the PowerPoint deck and actually reaches the manufacturing floor. Continuous improvement works when the people doing the work are empowered to see problems and improve the systems around them.

Linus Torvalds — for the relentless pursuit of technical quality and the willingness to challenge decisions when the engineering isn't good enough.

Looking at the list, I realized there's a common thread.

Be curious. Build things. Learn by doing. Give people the tools and agency to improve their own work. Don't accept "that's just how we do it" as an answer. And when you want something, be willing to go after it.

I suspect I'm still figuring out how much each of these people has influenced the way I think.