What's the best car? What's the best country? Who's the best singer? What's the best beer? Which is the best musical instrument? Who's the best ever artist? Who's the best ever scientist?
As a step towards a more answerable version of your question, how about this: What are some orderings by which we can evaluate programmers? Who comes at the top of those? Who comes at or near the top of several?
As an example, for 3d game engine design, clearly Tim Sweeney of Epic Games is one of the top developers, if not THE top developer, in the field today. TODAY.
That said, I wouldn't hire him to write an operating system.
In his day, he was probably considered by many to be the best programmer in his field. Part of that had to do with pushing limits of the hardware at the time and also shipping code.
With the speediness of computers now, this sort of raw optimization is less celebrated. Also, games and other projects have tended to become massive team efforts, harder to pinpoint to one great programmer.
How many of those dollars did he earn actually programming.
Don't get me wrong I think he has been an awesome business man I just don't know how good a programmer he really is. Indeed he may be a most brilliant programmer but still have not really worked as a programmer in earning his fortune?