Sometimes it's difficult to come up with a reason for gathering and hanging out with your colleagues. You may say that we have official holidays and birthdays — yeah, that's right — but it's still quite a few. And we found a way out!
After surfing the internet and chatting with our colleagues, we can say that there're much more holidays for developers than it seems. We're pretty sure that our digest will make you happier, and maybe even surprise you. We ourselves learned about many holidays only when writing the article.
So, now you'll have more reasons to get together with colleagues after hard-working days. We place all holidays in calendar order. Suppose it makes your reading experience easier.
The second part is available here.
January 1 — Brian Kernighan's Birthday
We can celebrate not only New Year's Eve but also one of the notable scientists' birthday, Brian Kernighan. He worked at Bell Labs Corp. Earlier in his career, he was a software editor for Prentice Hall International. He is best known for his collaborations with Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson. They contributed to the development of the Unix OS. Kernighan wrote many Unix programs, including cron and ditroff for Version 7 Unix. He's also the co-author of the AMPL and AWK programming languages and the well-known book "The C Programming Language".
January 10 — Donald Ervin Knuth's Birthday
Donald Knuth is a mathematician, computer scientist, and author of the monograph "The Art of Computer Programming". He contributed to the development of computational complexity analysis of algorithms and formal mathematical methods. He is even called "the father of algorithm analysis".
January 14 — Nathaniel Rochester's Birthday
Nathaniel Rochester was a programmer, computer scientist who was a member of IBM and participated in the creation of IBM 701. He also wrote the first character assembler and designed one of the first programming languages, FORTRAN.
January 15 — Wikipedia Day
Who hasn't used good old Wikipedia at least once?! On this day in 2001, it has opened its first webpages. You've undoubtedly used it for study purposes more than once, but you shouldn't always believe what it says. :)
Inaccuracies can occur because of misleading resources or clumsy terms in translation. For example, Wikipedia has a description of the famous photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper".
This is a staged photo where real workers are posing. However, some translated versions of the description used the term "photomontage" instead of "staged". Words can change the way we perceive the photo. Even if they seem to convey the same message. Later the inaccuracy attracted attention and was corrected.
January 21 — Java 1.0 Release
The day when computers started saying "Hello, world!" in a new language. Thanks for Sun Microsystems, the first official version of Java was released in 1996.
January 24 — Apple Macintosh PC Release
Everyone knows Apple, one of the top companies in the world. However, few people know what the first PCs was called and look like. The name has its own origin. The PC is named after the popular type of apple in North America, "Malus 'McIntosh'".
January 28 — International Data Protection Day
Every day, millions of users post information about themselves on the internet. This holiday is created to remind: follow the WWW rules. After all, these rules help keep your online life in safe.
January 29 — International Internet-Free Day
Have you protected your data? Cool. Now it's time to take our minds off social networks, news, and YouTube. This holiday is a great opportunity to spend some time with your family or teammates. As Dominic Toretto said, "There's nothing stronger than family."
January 31 — Guido van Rossum's Birthday
We wrap up January with an important event: it's Guido van Rossum's birthday. Why is it important? He created the well-known Python language. Rossum developed it while working at Google. He is still managing the Python development process.
February 1 — "Change Your Password" Day
Some users often set easy passwords or even same passwords for different resources. The day reminds us that it's better to enhance our data security and protect it from unauthorized access. Have you changed your passwords? Then it's time to chill out and stop worrying.
You won't be surprised to spot that the most commonly used passwords are still:
However, we hope that you will never use them!
February 4 — Ken Thompson's Birthday
Ken Thompson is a pioneer of the computer and hacking community. He developed and adopted the Unix OS. Moreover, he designed the B programming language and developed the Plan 9 OS at early stages. He also developed the Go programming language while working at Google.
February 11 — Safer Internet Day
The European Commission established this holiday that once again reminds us to use the internet responsibly and safely.
February 13 — .NET Framework Release Day
.NET Framework is a new platform that the programming community was introduced to on this day in 2002. Developers finally get a tool to build robust Windows apps.
February 14 — Geek Day or Computer Day
If you're alone, you don't have to stay at home and sorrow. After all, this day is an IT professional's holiday! Why February 14th? On February 14, 1946, the ENIAC I, the first actual working computer, was introduced to the scientific community.
February 15 — Niklaus Wirth's Birthday
The programming world knew Wirth for his contributions to the development of many programming languages such as Pascal and Modula. He was a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for significant work in programming languages and algorithms.
February 22 — Thomas E. Kurtz's Birthday
Thomas Kurtz, a computer scientist, who implemented the Dartmouth time-sharing system and also developed the BASIC programming language. The language helped popularize programming, and many developers wrote their first "Hello, world!" in that very language.
February 24 — Steve Jobs' Birthday
Steve Jobs was a famous American business magnate and inventor. His name is associated with Apple, of course. He was one of the founders of this corporation. But not just this one... Steve also was the co-founder of much-loved animation studio, Pixar.
March 2 — Compact Disk Day
Remember this device? This little helper has come to our rescue many times in the past. It all started in the UK, when Philips, Sony and Polygram introduced the first laser CD to stunned public. It was 12 cm in diameter. To show its features, the inventors recorded the Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony of 74 minutes on the disk.
March 6 — International Open Data Day
Even computers start divulge their secrets on this international holiday! The holiday promotes the concept of open data, especially among public authorities, business, and nonprofit organizations. Every year on this day, developers organize different events: hackathons, conferences, and meetups.
March 12 — Computer Glitch Day
Oh, how often programmers have to put up with "glitches" and "bugs"! In honor of this, the mock holiday was established. There're several versions of its origin. Here's a creepy one but with a happy ending. In February 2003, the police, insurance companies, ambulance services, and other organizations were notified of the deaths of 8,500 patients at St. Mary's Mercy Hospital. Fortunately, all these people turned out to be alive. The message was just a glitch caused by a computer malfunction. Up to early March, developers worked to get the computer systems up and running.
March 14 — International Pi Day
A day when humanity sings praises in honor of the Pi constant. The date was chosen because March 14 (3/14) coincides with the first three digits of this number. Larry Shaw established this holiday. He was an employee of the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco.
March 21 — PVS-Studio Foundation Day
For every employee of this awesome company, this may be one of the most significant holidays. The company is developing a static analyzer that helps its clients all over the world. You can read more about the company and its history here.
March 31 — World Backup Day
One day, Reddit users established this holiday. And the date has been chosen for a reason. The next day is April 1, and hackers are doing massive virus attacks that cause computer crashes. That's the kind of "jokes", though. The best way to celebrate is to back up everything valuable for you and then hang out.
April 4 — International Webmaster Day
The holiday date was chosen for a reason. If you take a closer look, you can notice that 4.04 looks like a 404 error ("Page not found"): the one that webmasters often encounter.
May 17 — World Telecommunication and Information Society Day
The holiday date is related to the creation of International Telegraph Union on May 17, 1865. The holiday is dedicated to IT workers. It's also an international professional holiday.
On the photo, you can see the delegates of the First International Telegraph Conference (Paris, 1865). Source: ITU.
May 17 — Internet Day
The great and mighty internet was officially born on that today! It's said that the WWW was approved as the official standard for World Wide Web pages on this day in 1991. From then until now, the internet makes our lives easier in many ways. Is there a better reason to gather together with colleagues and just party?
May 17 — Alan Curtis Kay's Birthday
This day we celebrate not only Internet Day, but also Alan Curtis Kay's Birthday. He is a computer scientist and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Arts. Most importantly, he developed the Smalltalk programming language, the first to use the object-oriented approach.
May 19 — James Gosling's Birthday
James Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist, known as the father of the Java programming language. James developed a multiprocessing version of Unix, several compilers, and email systems. Overall, this man made a significant impact on the programming world.
May 31 — John G. Kemeny's Birthday
You know the BASIC language, don't you? So, John Kemeny was one of the inventors of this language. The language was all-purpose symbolic code. However, that was not all merits of the scientist. He pioneered the use of computers in college education.
June 6 — World Tetris Day
The bricks stacked into a perfect form, and Tetris was born. People still play it and compete in it. So, let this summer day be full of joy and childhood nostalgia when you first run Tetris.
June 8 — Tim Berners-Lee's Birthday
He is that man who invented the World Wide Web. On August 3, 1991, the British scientist Timothy Berners-Lee officially introduced the world's first internet website. The world has dramatically changed since that moment.
By the way, the website still works!
June 8 — Unity First Release
Unity is a game engine, thanks to which we can get together with colleagues and play some fun games. The first Unity version appeared in 2005 when the first engine was announced on Worldwide Developers Conference. Unity was originally designed exclusively for macOS, and an update was released on August, allowing it to run on Windows.
June 22 — Konrad Zuse's Birthday
Konrad Zuse was a German engineer, one of the computer engineering pioneers. He was best-known as the creator of the first working electromechanical programmable computer, the Z3. He also designed Plankalkül, the first high-level programming language.
June 23 — Alan Mathison Turing's Birthday
Alan Turing was a mathematician, computer scientist, logician, and cryptanalyst. He was called "the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence". During WWII, he developed many methods for breaking German ciphers.
The computer science world remembers him for the model of a finite-state automaton. This invention can emulate any computing machine. That's what it's called, the Turing Machine.
June 23 — Vinton Gray Cerf's Birthday
Vinton (or Vint) Cerf is known as one of "the fathers of the internet". He's the American computer scientist and co-designer of the basic protocols (TCP/IP). Influencers like Vint enable us to surf the internet.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading our digest! Perhaps you've discovered new events from the IT world. We hope we've motivated you to chill with your colleagues and make plans for the year ahead. Wait for part 2!