For example, the prototypical idea of swapping out Git's disk-trie content-addressed object store for an actual DHT to get immutable distributed file system must have occurred to a lot of people when they first learned about Git's internals.
I don't know about @jbenet's particular journey to these ideas, but I suspect Rich Hickey deserves a lot of credit for using Clojure (and his fun, smart talks) to popularize immutability and name/value separation for a new generation of programmers. Even just ambiently.
That's certainly how I started realizing the power of that paradigm, even though I was already using it for my day job! Especially when I then saw it used building Datomic, which of course leverages immutability to totally refactor the traditional database architecture from client/server into self-serve-client/server/transactor in a really interesting way.
Also, with Clojure's HAMTs, you've got hash trees and cheap immutable update, and that again primes you to read about (or reinvent) Merkle trees. So I doubt nearly as many people would know about such neat CS things without Clojure.
Actually, Bitcoin is also a really obvious way these ideas would become more widespread, though I don't know how many people really go through the trouble of understanding the blockchain mechanism.
And Linus, of course, for Git. Git internal design is really nice and everyone should dip in at some point in their career!
We should give Ralph Merkle a Turing award -- that single idea unlocks so much. Except we shouldn't because he patented Merkle Trees, apparently.