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Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

John Carmack

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John Carmack
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: August 20
Aerospace Engineer
Businessperson
Chief Technology Officer
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Programmer
Video Game Developer
Roeland Park
Kansas
John D. Carmack
John D. Carmack II
Rocket
Rockets
Proportion
Difficulty
Science
True

More quotes by John Carmack

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Making one brilliant decision and a whole bunch of mediocre ones isn't as good as making a whole bunch of generally smart decisions throughout the whole process.
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Note to self: Pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours.
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Sharing the code just seems like The Right Thing to Do. It costs us rather little, but it benefits a lot of people in sometimes very significant ways. There are many university research projects, proof of concept publisher demos, and new platform test beds that have leveraged the code. Free software that people value adds wealth to the world.
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If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.
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We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version.
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It's nice to have a game that sells a million copies.
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It is difficult to make good scalable use of a CPU like you can of a graphics card. You certainly don't want 'better or worse' physics or AI in your game
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Programming in the abstract sense is what I really enjoy. I enjoy lots of different areas of it... I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment writing device drivers for Linux. I could also be having a good time writing a database manager or something because there are always interesting problems.
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If you're willing to restrict the flexibility of your approach, you can almost always do something better
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I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do.
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Everybody's saturated with the marketing hype of next-generation consoles. They are wonderful, but the truth is that they are as powerful as a high end PC is right now.
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Some cynical people think that every activity must revolve around the mighty dollar, and that anyone saying otherwise is just attempting to delude the public. I will probably never be able to convice them that that isn't always the case, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that I live in a less dingy world than they do.
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It's a good thing Doom 3 is selling very well.
John Carmack
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The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC.
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The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
John Carmack
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Focused, hard work is the real key to success.
John Carmack
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At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.
John Carmack
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Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.
John Carmack
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An interesting question: is it easier to motivate a learned individual that never does anything, or educate an ignorant individual that actually produces things?
John Carmack
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It is not that uncommon for the cost of an abstraction to outweigh the benefit it delivers. Kill one today!
John Carmack