Programming heroes

Who are your heroes of programming?

For me, it's humble people who generously contribute without expecting any recognition or reward.

Fabrice Bellard comes to mind: FFMPEG, QEMU etc.

John Carmack
For creating great engines and making them open source!

Michael Abrash
For his work on the Quake engine and his book "Graphics Programming Black Book", which is a great read about optimization (albeit a bit outdated).