The following is a list of 86 IT professionals who have produced notable or extraordinary work in educating the IT community.

There are some famous names here, but it is not a fame list so names such as Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak or Mark Zuckerberg are less likely to be added than a lesser known professional who has done more IT educational work.

This year zombiecodekill has made this process democratic, not just accepting suggestions but featuring polls for the public to vote for one Teacher to be crowned Teacher of the Year 2015.

The last 3 finalists were:

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer – JavaScript expert, author of speaking JS and exploring ES6
Erik Dietrich – .NET expert
Tomas Petricek – Functional Programming expert

The first poll ended on 7th September and the final poll ended on 7th October. Dr Axel Rauschmayer had the most votes in each poll.

Congratulations to Dr Axel Rauschmayer.

Teacher	Role	Website(s)	Twitter	Comments
Aaron Powell	Frontend Developer	http://www.aaron-powell.com/	@slace	Microsoft MVP for Internet Explorer Development
Aaron Skonnard	CEO of Pluralsight	Pluralsight blog	@skonnard	Aaron is an expert in connected systems and has produced several good courses on Windows Communication Foundation as well as the Managed Services Engine
Adam Tuliper	Microsoft Technical Evangelist	complete development blogspot	@AdamTuliper	Author of Hack Proofing ASP.NET course
Adele Goldberg	Computer Scientist	WITI Hall of Fame		One of the founders of Smalltalk
Andre Lamothe	Embedded systems developer and game programmer	Books by Lamothe		Author of several game programming books
Anders Hejlsberg	Technical Fellow at Microsoft	Channel 9 Behind the Code C#	@ahejlsberg	Inventor of Turbo Pascal, C# and TypeScript
Ayende Rahien	Developer	http://ayende.com	@ayende	Creator of RavenDB. Ayende’s real name is Oren Eini.
Alistair Cockburn	Developer and Agile development consultant	alistair.cockburn.us	@TotherAlistair	Founder of the Agile Manifesto. Crystal methodologies and much more.
Andrew Brust	Blue Badge Insights CEO	bluebadgeinsights.com	@andrewbrust	Author of the ZDNet blog “Big On Data”, and is a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP.
Bjarne Stroustrup	Managing Director of Morgan Stanley technology division and Visiting Professor at Columbia University	stroustrup.com		Inventor of C++
Brad Cox	Programmer	Belaborating The Obvious Computer World
Brad Fitzpatrick	Go Programmer	Live Journal	@bradfitz	Author of OpenID
Bruce Eckel	Author and Consultant	mindviewinc.com	@bruceeckel	Author of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++
Clemens Vasters	Architect at Microsoft	vasters.com/clemensv	@clemensv	Pluralsight author
Cory House	Developer / Architect	bitnative.com	@housecor	Founder of BitNative and Pluralsight author
Craig Shoemaker	Web Developer, Instructor, Evangelist	craigshoemaker.net/	@craigshoemaker
Dan Appleman	CTO of Full Circle CRM	advancedapex.com/	@danappleman	Dan has extensive entrepreneurial experience, including founding Desaware Inc. and APress publishing.
Dan Wahlin	Web application developer	Dan Wahlin	@danwahlin	AngularJS, JavaScript, HTML5, jQuery, Node.js, ASP.NET, C#, XAML
Dave Thomas	Programmer	Prag Dave	@pragdave	Author and Founder of the Agile Manifesto
David Heinemeier Hansson	CTO at Basecamp	DHH	@DHH	Creator of Ruby on Rails
David Chappell	IT Consultant	Opinari	@DChappellAssoc	David has been the keynote speaker for more than 100 conferences and events
David Starr	Senior Program Manager, Microsoft	Elegant Code	@ElegantCoder	Served as Chief Craftsman for Scrum.org and was a Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio ALM for 5 years
Donald Belcham	Agile Developer	Igloo Coder		Microsoft MVP in C#
Donald Knuth	Professor	Stanford		Author of The Art of Computer Programming
Dafydd Stuttard	Security expert	portswigger.net	@portswigger	Creator of Burp Suite and author of the web application hacker’s handbook
Douglas Crockford	Frontend Architect at PayPal	crockford.com		Author of JavaScript the good parts
Ed Liberman	Windows Server and Networking instructor	Pluralsight Blog	@Pluralsight_Ed	As an instructor, Ed has helped thousands of people to get started or advance their careers in IT.
Eric Evans	Programmer	Evans DDD	@ericevans0	Author of Domain Driven Design
Garann Means	Frontend Web developer	totes profesh	@garannm
Gary Eimerman	VP of IT Pro content at Pluralsight	garyeimerman.com	@GaryEimerman
Greg Low	SQL engineer	Channel 9 SQL Blog	@greglow	SQL Server MVP, Microsoft RD and host of the SQL Down Under podcast.
Guido van Rossum	Benelovent Dictator	Guido	@gvanrossum	Inventor of Python
Guy Steele	Java Programmer	Growing a Language		Coauthored all three editions of The Java Language Specification
Håkon Wium Lie	CTO of Opera Software	Håkon Cascading Stylesheets PhD Thesis		Inventor of CSS
James Gosling	Chief Software Architect at Liquid Robotics	Nighthacks James Gosling		Inventor of Java
Jeff Atwood	Developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur	Coding Horror	@codinghorror	One of the world’s best bloggers
Jeremy Ashkenas	JavaScript Developer		@jashkenas	Creator of CoffeeScript, BackboneJS and UnderscoreJS
Jeremy Jarrell	Software Developer	jeremyjarrell.com	@jeremyjarrell	Pluralsight author
Joe Sack	SQL Engineer		@josephsack	Consultant, author, speaker, Microsoft SQL Server MVP and MCM specializing in performance tuning, scalability, high availability and disaster recovery.
Joel Spolsky	Programmer	Joel On Software	@spolsky	Creator of Stack Overflow
John Resig	JavaScript Developer	ejohn	@jeresig	Creator of JQuery
John Sonmez	Simple Programmer	simple programmer	@jsonmez	Author of 40+ Pluralsight courses
Jon Skeet	Developer at Google	csharpindepth.com	@jonskeet	Author of C# in Depth book and Mastering C# 4.0 Pluralsight course. StackOverflow superhero.
Joshua Bloch	Java Programmer / Architect		@joshbloch	Author of Effective Java
Julie Lerman	.NET Developer and mentor	thedatafarm.com	@julielerman	Microsoft MVP and author on VTdotNET, Pluralsight and MSDN magazine
Kalen Delaney	SQL engineer	SQL Server Internals	@sqlqueen	Long serving SQL expert, author and instructor
Ken Schwaber	Co-founder of Scrum and founder of Scrum.org	scrum.org	@kschwaber	Founder of the Agile Alliance and the Scrum Alliance. Created the Certified Scrum Master programs
Kent Beck	Agile and TDD pioneer	Wikipedia	@kentbeck	One of the founders of the Agile Manifesto. Developed and popularised Test Driven Development
Kimberly Tripp	SQL Engineer	SQLskills	@KimberlyLTripp	Consultant, author, speaker, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Microsoft Regional Director, MCM instructor, and Pluralsight author specializing in performance tuning.
Kyle Simpson	Open Web Evangelist	Getify	@getify	Author, workshop trainer, tech speaker, and avid Open Source community member with many contributions in JavaScript, HTML5, real-time/peer-to-peer communications, and web performance
Mark McDonnell	Senior BBC News Engineer	integralist.co.uk	@integralist	Uses Ruby/RSpec, Node, PHP, BEM, AMD
Mark Seemann	Developer / Architect	blog.ploeh.dk	@ploeh	Author of Dependency Injection in .NET book, creator of AutoFixture, Pluralsight author
Martijn Pieters	Senior Open Software Engineer	Martijn Pieters	@zopatista	With many years experience of serious web and content management applications, Martijn is the world’s most helpful expert Python developer.
Martin Fowler	Programmer and Author	Martin Fowler	@martinfowler	International speaker on software development, object-oriented analysis and design, design patterns and agile software development methodologies. Martin has written many excellent and influential books.
Martin Odersky	Professor of Programming Methods at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	LAMP Publications	@odersky	Lead designer of Scala
Michael Dexter	SAFe Consultant	mdexterscms	@mdexterscms
Michael Feathers	Director	silvrback.com	@mfeathers	Author of working effectively with legacy code
Mike Cohn	Agile Software Development Consultant	mountain goat software	@mikewcohn	Author of Succeeding with Agile book
Misko Hevery	Javascript Developer at Google		@mhevery	One of the key developers of Angular JS
Linus Torvalds	Linux superhero	wikipedia	@linus__torvalds	Creator of Linux
Miguel De Icaza	Free Software Programmer	Tirania	@migueldeicaza
Paul Irish	Frontend Web Developer	Paul Irish	@paul_irish
Paul Randal	SQL Engineer	SQLskills	@PaulRandal	Consultant, author, speaker, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Microsoft Regional Director, MCM instructor, and Pluralsight author specializing in high availability and disaster recovery.
Rob Conery	Developer	wekeroad.com	@robconery	Cofounder of Tekpub and creator of This Developer’s Life
Roy Osherove	TDD and Continuous Integration consultant	osherove.com	@RoyOsherove	Author of Beautiful Builds and The Art Of Unit Testing
Richard Stallman	President of the Free Software Foundation	wikipedia		Inventor of the GNU project
Scott Allen	ASP.NET developer	odetocode.com	@odetocode	Earned over a million dollars as a Pluralsight author
Scott Hanselman	Tech Evangelist at Microsoft	Scott Hanselman	@shanselman
Scott Guthrie	Executive VP cloud and enterprise group at Microsoft	Scott Gu	@scottgu	Creator of ASP.NET
Scott Meyers	C++ Trainer	C++11	@Scott__Meyers	C++ Author and Trainer
Seth Ladd	Google web engineer	sethladd.com
Shawn Wildermuth	Developer	wildermuth.com	@ShawnWildermuth	Author of more than a dozen Pluralsight courses
Stephen Forte	IT Entrepreneur	about.me	@worksonmypc	Author of Best Practices for Software Startups
Steve Smith	Developer	ardalis.com	@ardalis	Pluralsight author
Stephen Walther	Programmer and Author	ST	@swalther	Author of many books including ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed, ASP.NET 4.0 Unleashed and Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript Unleashed
Tim Berners-Lee	Director of the W3C	Tim Berners-Lee on the next web W3 People	@timberners_lee	Inventor of the World Wide Web
Tim O’Reilly	Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media	Bio Radar	@timoreilly
TJ Holowaychuk	JavaScript developer	Medium	@tjholowaychuk	Creator of Luna, ExpressJS and many other open source projects
Troy Hunt	Software Architect and Web security expert	Troy Hunt	@troyhunt	Software architect, Pluralsight author and Microsoft MVP
Uncle Bob Martin	Software Craftsman	cleancoder.com	@unclebobmartin	Author of Agile PPP
Vint Cerf	Computer Scientist	Vinton Gray Cerf	@vgcerf	Invented TCP/IP
Ward Cunningham	Developer	Wikipedia		A pioneer in design patterns and Extreme Programming
Yehuda Katz	JavaScript developer		@wycats	Best selling author and member of the Ember.js, Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Teams
Yukihiro Matsumoto	Programmer	The Ruby Programming Language	@matz_translated	Inventor of Ruby

Additional Reading
Wikipedia List of Programmers