What is the top award/honor/prize that a computer programmer/scientist can get?

Question

Most specific disciplines have an award/honor/prize for excellence in their field.

So what is the most prestigious award for programming on the lines of the Nobel prize and the Fields Medal?

Answer 1

Most people would say the Turing Award. This is computer science in general rather than programming in particular, but the distinction is small.

Answer 2

Lots of happy users? After all, we do write software, right? Is peer review not a part of this process?

If I come up with something that gets me the Turing Award and nobody can use it, what good is it?

Perhaps you should differentiate programmers and scientists in your question.

Answer 3

Personally I'd say that the tens of billions of dollars Google's founders got would have to take the cake as far as prizes for computer science go.

Answer 4

Knuth Checks perhaps? Just don't cash them ;)

Answer 5

Ten digit sum in your account. ;-)

But seriously, there is already mentioned ACM's Turing Award, but also there is less known Charles Stark Draper Prize and two awards by IEEE: Simon Ramo Medal (software) and Robert N. Noyce Medal (hardware).

Answer 6

Wikipedia lists a few under the Computer Science, Engineering, Technology and Invention category that would probably be a good starting point. There are also Millenium Prize Problems that would also be a high honor like if someone solved the P vs. NP problem that is part of Computer Science though others are mostly Mathematical.