[oblio]

About Icefrog - I can't really say anything about his programming skills - I think he must be decent since he optimized the JASS scripts used by the Warcraft 3 engine and he also created tons of fun stuff using it. As a comparison, his predecessor, Guinsoo, had created a map with a 10 minute loading time (!). In Icefrog's reign I don't think any map had a loading time above 1-2 minutes on a decent computer.

Anyway, getting back to the topic - I don't know about his strength as a programmer, but I think we could all learn from him as a community leader. Anonymous leader, rallied a lot of people around him (a few other coders, a lot of testers, a TON of contributors), gave Dota a rhythm, a release flow that made Dota huge. You'd play the game knowing that game crashing bugs would be fixed ASAP, that game play balance issues would be resolved, that the next version would make everything just BETTER.

A ton of dedication and hard work didn't hurt either :)