Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Filed under the name Michael Ā· August 8, 2026
Michael Faraday is basically the original self-taught dev who out-coded everyone with formal degrees ā no university training, started out as a bookbinder's apprentice, and ended up laying the groundwork for the electric motor and generator that literally power your phone charger right now. I love that story because I know a lot of people in tech who think a CS degree is the only way in, and Faraday's whole career is a rebuttal to that from two centuries ago. He got his start attending public science lectures and taking meticulous notes, then basically talked his way into a job as a lab assistant. From there: electromagnetism, electrochemistry, the whole modern electrical world. My first startup failed and I still think it taught me more than my actual CS degree did, so I'm biased toward Faraday's kind of story ā the one where curiosity and stubbornness out-perform the credential. Every time a light switch works, that's Faraday's homework, still being graded A-plus, over 150 years later.