Anders Hejlsberg

developed Turbo Pascal practically singlehandedly, left Borland after 13 years with Pascal, objects and Delphi to join MS, now the architect of C# . The man who gave peek, poke, deek and doke to your avarage Pascal programmer. Heavy sinner against the laws of [Niklaus Wirth]

A conversation with A. H. about handcuffs and stuff (via hns and lcom)

update Dec 2005: Of course the guy's got wikipedia entries in different languages now (deservedly) and many good links on google. . Here's what he says about MSTF:

I also think that Microsoft in the last five years has gone through a big transformation in terms of transparency and community involvement, openness and so forth. The kinds of dialogues we engage in with customers now are very, very different from what they were five years ago, and night and day from what they were ten years ago. You know, the whole industry, through blogging and open source and what have you, has very much switched around, and sort of the center of gravity lies much more with the individual developer and the individual person than it used to.

I tend to quite-believe him. But then again, I don't see this has reached many of their otherwise indoctrinated people on the edge yet. They are trying to change and with all that image to defend it is clear that J++ was not their way to go.