True, it's a weird thing to say. I am in no position to rank them, I assume they are both excellent at their niches (granted bellard seems to be interested in a lot of niches) but it never hurt anybody to be humble in this position.

Well, carmack is THE game dev of 90s and 2000s fame. His 2d/3d engine work was outstanding back in the day.

Bellard did multiple breakthroughs: ffmpeg, qemu, tcc, jslinux, a state of the art FFT algorithm. I probable skipped a few.

With all due respect to carmack, a single ballard's projects would put anybody into the eternal hall of programmers fame right next to Linus, Carmack, Stallman, the Bell labs crowd and others.

i do understand how carmack did what he did logistically (time, effort, skills, compensation)...

Fabrice is just out of this world. When? How? Why? No idea.

I think "he's almost certainly a better programmer than me" is a double form of humility: first, he's assuming that Fabrice Bellard is a better programmer than him based on the evidence and reputation, but he's also admitting that he doesn't have direct knowledge of this. Hence "almost certainly."

its because carmacl enjoys a lot of fame around his tricks. ppl get like that.