[zerr]

An opinion: there were (and are) many great unknown engineers behind proprietary corporate projects. FFmpeg and QEMU became famous because these are open-source projects, not because nothing similar was done before (it was done, but in the proprietary world).

[hashar]

Maybe but I think you are underestimating the achievements Fabrice has accomplished. Among others: - Improved an algorithm to compute Pi, ran it on a *personal laptop* and broke the world record. That achievement is not even listed on his personal homepage, and it a single line of facts with Zero bragging involved https://www.bellard.org/pi/pi2700e9/ - a PC emulator in vanilla javascript, boot the Linux Kernel in a browser and get a virtual terminal also implemented from scratch - QuickJS, embeddable, self contained (no libs) and fast JavaScript engine matching almost entirely ES2025 - NNCP, a Neural Networks driven lossless data compression system

And more https://www.bellard.org/

I have been referring to his page for decades as an example of one can have a huge respect without having a fancy web page and no bragging at all. He is a genius :-)

[zerr]

Not at all. I mean, regardless of him not having a fancy web page or an Instagram, he is anyway an Internet geek celebrity we all know and respect. My point is that I believe there are many similar but noname engineers whose achievements stayed and will stay behind corporate proprietary walls.