While he'd been working with and thinking about the problem for a long time the speed at which Linus produced Git always amazes me: "development of Git began on 3 April 2005...On 16 June, the kernel 2.6.12 release was managed by Git...Torvalds turned over maintenance on 26 July 2005".[1] Perhaps he should have some more breaks for side projects.<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)</a>
Given the average time it takes for people to receive these Linus is getting it very early. Super nice to see his contribution recognized like this. It will be very interesting to see in a hundred years from now or so what will be the longest living contribution he's made, Linux or git.<p>Looking through this list he is in very august company indeed.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Pioneer_Award" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Pioneer_Award</a>
Her is great video from Google tech Talk starring Linus Torvalds (about Git): <a href="http://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8</a>. Note - Linus uses some strong language.
I'm not sure that it's a great idea to keep giving Linus prizes. He probably already has quite a collection of them. Instead I think some of the other kernel maintainers should get prizes.