I don't know where you are coming from saying Carmack 'coasted (technically)' after he made his bucks. He is about a hard core coder as they come. Its not like he took some CEO desk job after Doom came out. From the first commander keen all the way through probably Quake 3, the stuff he wrote was all cutting edge.
My point was, from a "how well-known are they" standpoint, these other guys earn a lot more points for just being rich and famous than they do for being great hackers.
No doubt many of them continue to do great technical work that constitutes "great hacking" in anybody's book. But that's not why (by and large) people buy the books and become fans.
If you are focusing on the technical skill of hackery then you are going down the wrong trail. I'm talking about living the life of hacking, as most hackers understand and would actually practice it, as opposed to being a famous hacker. Let's face it, odds are you'll never be a billionaire with your own rocket company. But you just might spend 20 years of your life working on a pet project. These guys are our guys. They're us.
Whilst I get where you're coming from, to me you are falling into the 'mainstream can't be cool' point of view. Just because someone is successful and rich doesn't mean they can't be judged on what they do anymore.
In some respects, I think that continuing to do what you love even after you have 'fuck you money' is one of the strongest indicators of a persons passions. Carmack could have stopped programming games years ago, yet he continues to innovate and push boundaries. For him, the rocket company IS his pet project and is just as brilliant an example of hacking as anything else. Both Gates and Jobs could have retired to a private island (or even private archipelago) years ago, instead both continued to work at their passions long past necessary. And now Gates has a new pet project, it just happens to have a lot more money and publicity than Dwarf Fortress.
The notion of hacker-points is just so tiresome and not the kind of discussion that I want to have. We don't need to constantly one-up people, even if we're comparing this person to that person.
Put another way: it's possible to praise his behavior without pissing on someone else.
