Ask HN: Are exceptional programmers highly opinionated?

It seems to me that many respected programmers are highly opinionated, often imposing (implicitly or explicitly) their dogmatic view on how they and those around them write code.

I've seen "best practices" lauded then discarded and paradigms go in and out of vogue. Between these exceptional programmers, even opinions differ.

How and why can those (or any) programmers be so absolute? Does there exist any exceptional level-headed developers?