Tim Sweeney is really interesting. He coded Unreal Engine 1 and is controlling shareholder of Epic. He gave a speech[0] January at a game conference arguing against the App/Play store 30% mark. I think he has internalized Ben Thompson's FAANG strategy concepts and created the best denunciation of the mindset, in this speech attacking the concept of "owning the customer." He joins Shopify in trying to create platforms in the Gates sense where most of the money goes to consumer and 3rd party. And a lot of his actions, in the short term, are against Epic's financial interests, commodifying and cannibalizing their own dominant market position for the sake of growing game industry TAM and a vision of future interoperability[1].
As far as 'getting into programming' goes, Sweeney is probably second only to Anders Heljsberg. Where the latter got me into 'proper' programming, until well into my late teens I was more interested in level editing and modding and whatnot.
In the same way that it was amazing to find out that the same guy was behind Turbo Pascal, Delphi and Typescript, it was amazing to discover that ZZT and UnrealED, years apart, were also just one guy. I spent so much time with these tools!
