I think Fabrice Bellard is one of the top computer programmers of our times.

https://bellard.org/

Linus Torvalds. He appears to be good at almost everything; C programming, project management, architecture, writing emails, etc.

how can you be good at "writing emails"?

Clear writing communicates complex ideas effectively and drives endeavors more than we give it credit for. Most emails I receive are longer than they ought to and makes N recipients spend T additional time to finally get the wrong idea and diverge in execution. More rambling emails are sent to align people. The sender can prevent this upstream by writing in a "clear, concise, complete, correct" way.

This is valid for issues/bug reports/feature requests/user stories, etc.

Richard Stallman, the last true MIT Hacker.

Assuming you mean breaking into systems, while I'm not immersed in that culture, I did enjoy Kevin Mitnik's Ghost in the Wires. It may be a bit dated, but some of the stories of early phone phreaking and social engineering was a fun ride -- and helps add a decent level of paranoia to answering phone calls today! Kevin Mitnik is a legend. He might not be the best of all time or today, but he is up there.

Are you aware that hacking is in most parts social engineering? Are you looking for the best hacker or social engineer? Are you aware of the differences between a hacker, a cracker and a script kiddie? What about participants in a hackathon - do you consider them hackers as well? I mean, the event has "hacking" in its name, right?

Very ambiguous question indeed for a community called "Hacker News" that targets a wide range of topics in technology and science, any of which can easily be considered "hacking".

If you're using the media's definition of hacker to mean someone breaking/exploiting computer stuff, then I would say we can't answer that. The best people conceal their identity and don't get caught, so we wouldn't know them.

My favorite is Jayson Street only because he does a great black hat with little to no programming. Which, of course, goes against the "well rounded" part of your question.

The mysterious hacker called 4chan.

Kevin Mitnick

Aaron Schwartz, the best freedom fighter

Swartz https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/

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