The word you're looking for is "respect" not "worship"

If you don't have great respect for John Carmack's programming knowledge and skills, you just don't know much about programming. It's that simple.

Imagine how clueless a singer-songwriter would have to be to not have great respect for Freddie Mercury or Paul McCartney.

I mean, he's very accomplished, with most of it being well known by the average user.

Because he showed the action fps was possible on limited hardware. Also he has had some good ideas in the software- design and architecture of Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake, that where apparent when he open sourced their engines.