I'm sure that none of the names will mean much to you if you were born after 1980 or so but when you read Jeff Minter, David Braben or any one of the other names references feel free to substitute 'Markus Persson' or 'John Carmack' and your feelings won't be too far off.

If you liked this article here is another one (more specifically about Elite):

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weeken...

i would love to see a modern day version of this list.

off the top of my head I think some of the names on it would include John Resig, David Heinemeier Hansson, Yehuda Katz