This article put Nielsen in the corner of "technically correct", but the influence he had on me at least was a strong focus on "empirically correct". i.e. doing actual tests (with humans) on what kind of things work to convey information. He did this to the detriment of "looking good", which is why his stuff ended up looking "hopelessly outdated", but I think he was on the right side of the fight.
Yeah, strong agree here. Nielsen brought a certain weight of rigor to the debate back in those days which made sense to the way I wanted to think about web design as an engineer. I don't really think there's a "winner" or "most right" person amongst the trio, but Nielsen's ethos appealed to me more than the others mentioned.