7 ms·

Some great anecdotes in there. As an aside, surely a person of Carmack's stature and knowledge would have a dedicated blog. I have to wonder if his decision to

Some great anecdotes in there. As an aside, surely a person of Carmack's stature and knowledge would have a dedicated blog. I have to wonder if his decision to post so many of these wonderful stories on Facebook might be due to some "pressure" from his employer.

chickenfries 8y ago
That seems like a HUGE reach to me. Not every technical person is a FOSS warrior. Would you say the same thing if he posted on Medium?
- aetherson 8y ago
  He doesn't work for Medium.
  - chickenfries 8y ago
    Ok, well, if this is really some big ploy by Facebook to now allow their employees to have personal blogs, then why do so many exist? https://medium.com/facebook-design https://medium.com/facebook-design
    - astrodust 8y ago
      It's probably because as a designer Facebook is fucking ugly and at least Medium has decent typography.
      - rhizome 8y ago
        I suspect the function of design at FB is oriented more toward consistency than beauty.
        astrodust 8y ago
        If by "consistency" you mean "function over form" then sure. It's basically brutalist.
        peterwwillis 8y ago
        If a website's aesthetics were important to Facebook's users they never would have joined. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-like-2014-2#this-is-what-a-facebook-group-page-looked-like-in-2005-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-li...
        astrodust 8y ago
        Like Craigslist, people don't really have a choice with Facebook. You either use it, as ugly as it is, or don't.
        peterwwillis 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. You mean they don't have a choice in the design? Because there were plenty of alternatives (MySpace). Facebook just provided a better experience.
        astrodust 8y ago
        Facebook's software might be better, their uptake was better, but that doesn't mean their site is more visually appealing. It just means it's more effective. Function over form.
        rhizome 8y ago
        By "consistency" I mean that its design is evolutionary and hasn't radically changed since the beginning. http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interfaces/ http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interface...
    - ovao 8y ago
      I don't believe it's a ploy. I think John's just doing what he feels to be the right thing given that he is — at least to the audience he writes to — a high-ranking employee of Facebook. I couldn't even tell you if he even thought that deeply about it. He possibly just thought "I can just write what I need to here, this works" and immediately considered it a solved problem.
nabla9 8y ago
sudo apt install finger finger johnc@oculus.com finger johnc@facebook.com sigh. his old ones have been archived https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive Finger was really great microblogging platform.
- mattdeboard 8y ago
  Interesting link. Thanks.
mseebach 8y ago
Several of the anecdotes are about not doing what Jobs wanted him to. Zuck doesn't hold a candle to Jobs' force of personality. I don't know if Carmack has FU money, but if he decides to part with Facebook, he'll have three job offers before he's out of the building. The only plausible explanation is that Carmack writes on Facebook out of his own free will.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > I don't know if Carmack has FU money He most definitely has. Heck, spent some of that on founding a rocket company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace
  - mseebach 8y ago
    I have a vague recollection that he lost his shirt at some point, possibly building rockets. Possibly there was something in Masters of Doom[1]? I don't have it near me, so can't check. 1: Biography of id software, obviously heavily featuring Carmack. Highly recommended.
  - gnode 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's evidence that he still has that kind of wealth. To quote Elon Musk: "If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one." Armadillo Aerospace went into "hibernation" in 2013 and sold off its assets.
    - seanp2k2 8y ago
      FWIW that phrase has been around for a long time. It’s fairly common in the aviation industry, but it’s used in others as well: https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke
    - adventured 8y ago
      Three strong counter points to that. 1) id Software sold to Zenimax for $150 million. [1] John Carmack was a large shareholder at the time and claimed a year ago that Zenimax still owes him another $22.5 million. Adrian Carmack owned 41% of id when he was fired & bought out of the company in 2005. From that ownership consolidation, it's very likely John had 1/3 or more of the company when it was sold to Zenimax. 2) Oculus was purchased for $2 billion. $400m in cash and 23 million shares of Facebook. Those shares would now be worth $4.2 billion. Carmack owned a position in Oculus pre the Andreessen Horowitz investment. A 1% stake would have been a substantial windfall. 3) He earned a large amount of money from being an owner of id Software from the Wolfenstein days forward. According to Wired, he put $8m into Armadillo before closing it down. The id sale alone covers that cost at least twice over after taxes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zenimax-owes-me-22-5m-as-part-of-2009-id-software-deal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zen...
craigsmansion 8y ago
I doubt Carmack could be pressured into using a particular platform, but either way it's a bit of a disappointment to see a living legend use common FB as a platform for blogging. Imagine getting the latest fascicle of TAOCP from a popular social platform instead of http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ It reminds me of a joke comic that praises "Don Knuth's Big Dummies Guide to Visual Basic", "All practical examples you can use! No theoretical stuff! --Don" It's not quite "DOOM's John Carmack's latest l33test Farmville hacks and tricks," but it's a little closer than I'd like it to be.
- copperx 8y ago
  Linus Torvalds blogs (or at least used to) on G+.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    From a great height the differences between things at the lower height become insubstantial and meaningless.
- MattSteelblade 8y ago
  While it's a disappointment, it's understandable. Oculus is a subsidiary of Facebook.
JohnCarmack 8y ago
Years ago, I felt burned when I wrote several articles for #AltDevBlogADay, and they vanished. I have much more confidence that what I write on FB won't vanish. I agree it isn't a great platform for writing, but I only write public long-form things a few times year, so I don't feel like going to another platform for it.
- EdSharkey 8y ago
  Hey John, thanks for Doom and Quake. I had lots of fun, and you and Abrash introduced me to 3D rendering techniques and advanced assembly programming techniques for which I am grateful since those skills put a little bread on the table long, long ago. Would you ever team up with Romero to make another game? I'd love to see your guys' take on a battle royale game. I'm having lots of fun with PUBG, but a game like that needs your engine optimization-fu.
- 0xfeba 8y ago
  Maybe someone will write a metablogging platform that posts to WordPress, Facebook, Twitter (in multiple tweets!), Instagram, etc. all with one button. RAIC, redundant array of inexpensive content. Actually, I'd be surprised if this didn't already exist.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Yes, there is a whole market. https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-at-once https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-at-... http://everypost.me/ http://everypost.me/ etc
  - praneshp 8y ago
    Ha, I cannot resist pointing you to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVskziCc4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVskziCc4w
- dgritsko 8y ago
  I specifically remember your quote "It is always better to not have a problem than to mitigate it" from the "Latency Mitigation Strategies" post on #AltDevBlogADay. It was so poignant to me that I wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to my monitor, where it remained for several years thereafter. Bummer that that content is no longer available (although I found a mirror of that particular post here: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigation-strategies/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigati...)
hinkley 8y ago
nabla9 kinda sidles up to this, but some will argue that John Carmack was one of, if not the, original bloggers. He used his .plan file on his unix account to post long musings on things he was concerned about in an era when running your own website was scary, or at least too trendy for people. The problem with maintaining a blog indefinitely is the same problem I see with musicians. The really profound stuff you come up with shows up at a slow rate. After ten years of obscurity you have years of material stored up. But you write what you know for a while and you don't know that much more than you did when you started. What goes on your 2nd or 3rd album? New good stuff, or the things that weren't good enough for your debut? If you're smart you stop for a while until you have enough good stuff again.

chickenfries 8y ago

That seems like a HUGE reach to me. Not every technical person is a FOSS warrior. Would you say the same thing if he posted on Medium?

aetherson 8y ago
He doesn't work for Medium.
- chickenfries 8y ago
  Ok, well, if this is really some big ploy by Facebook to now allow their employees to have personal blogs, then why do so many exist? https://medium.com/facebook-design https://medium.com/facebook-design
  - astrodust 8y ago
    It's probably because as a designer Facebook is fucking ugly and at least Medium has decent typography.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      I suspect the function of design at FB is oriented more toward consistency than beauty.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        If by "consistency" you mean "function over form" then sure. It's basically brutalist.
        peterwwillis 8y ago
        If a website's aesthetics were important to Facebook's users they never would have joined. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-like-2014-2#this-is-what-a-facebook-group-page-looked-like-in-2005-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-li...
        astrodust 8y ago
        Like Craigslist, people don't really have a choice with Facebook. You either use it, as ugly as it is, or don't.
        peterwwillis 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. You mean they don't have a choice in the design? Because there were plenty of alternatives (MySpace). Facebook just provided a better experience.
        astrodust 8y ago
        Facebook's software might be better, their uptake was better, but that doesn't mean their site is more visually appealing. It just means it's more effective. Function over form.
        rhizome 8y ago
        By "consistency" I mean that its design is evolutionary and hasn't radically changed since the beginning. http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interfaces/ http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interface...
  - ovao 8y ago
    I don't believe it's a ploy. I think John's just doing what he feels to be the right thing given that he is — at least to the audience he writes to — a high-ranking employee of Facebook. I couldn't even tell you if he even thought that deeply about it. He possibly just thought "I can just write what I need to here, this works" and immediately considered it a solved problem.

nabla9 8y ago

sudo apt install finger finger johnc@oculus.com finger johnc@facebook.com sigh. his old ones have been archived https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive Finger was really great microblogging platform.

mattdeboard 8y ago
Interesting link. Thanks.

mseebach 8y ago

Several of the anecdotes are about not doing what Jobs wanted him to. Zuck doesn't hold a candle to Jobs' force of personality. I don't know if Carmack has FU money, but if he decides to part with Facebook, he'll have three job offers before he's out of the building. The only plausible explanation is that Carmack writes on Facebook out of his own free will.

mpweiher 8y ago
> I don't know if Carmack has FU money He most definitely has. Heck, spent some of that on founding a rocket company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace
- mseebach 8y ago
  I have a vague recollection that he lost his shirt at some point, possibly building rockets. Possibly there was something in Masters of Doom[1]? I don't have it near me, so can't check. 1: Biography of id software, obviously heavily featuring Carmack. Highly recommended.
- gnode 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's evidence that he still has that kind of wealth. To quote Elon Musk: "If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one." Armadillo Aerospace went into "hibernation" in 2013 and sold off its assets.
  - seanp2k2 8y ago
    FWIW that phrase has been around for a long time. It’s fairly common in the aviation industry, but it’s used in others as well: https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke https://ask.metafilter.com/91579/Who-came-up-with-this-joke
  - adventured 8y ago
    Three strong counter points to that. 1) id Software sold to Zenimax for $150 million. [1] John Carmack was a large shareholder at the time and claimed a year ago that Zenimax still owes him another $22.5 million. Adrian Carmack owned 41% of id when he was fired & bought out of the company in 2005. From that ownership consolidation, it's very likely John had 1/3 or more of the company when it was sold to Zenimax. 2) Oculus was purchased for $2 billion. $400m in cash and 23 million shares of Facebook. Those shares would now be worth $4.2 billion. Carmack owned a position in Oculus pre the Andreessen Horowitz investment. A 1% stake would have been a substantial windfall. 3) He earned a large amount of money from being an owner of id Software from the Wolfenstein days forward. According to Wired, he put $8m into Armadillo before closing it down. The id sale alone covers that cost at least twice over after taxes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zenimax-owes-me-22-5m-as-part-of-2009-id-software-deal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/john-carmack-zen...

craigsmansion 8y ago

I doubt Carmack could be pressured into using a particular platform, but either way it's a bit of a disappointment to see a living legend use common FB as a platform for blogging. Imagine getting the latest fascicle of TAOCP from a popular social platform instead of http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ It reminds me of a joke comic that praises "Don Knuth's Big Dummies Guide to Visual Basic", "All practical examples you can use! No theoretical stuff! --Don" It's not quite "DOOM's John Carmack's latest l33test Farmville hacks and tricks," but it's a little closer than I'd like it to be.

copperx 8y ago
Linus Torvalds blogs (or at least used to) on G+.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  From a great height the differences between things at the lower height become insubstantial and meaningless.
MattSteelblade 8y ago
While it's a disappointment, it's understandable. Oculus is a subsidiary of Facebook.

JohnCarmack 8y ago

Years ago, I felt burned when I wrote several articles for #AltDevBlogADay, and they vanished. I have much more confidence that what I write on FB won't vanish. I agree it isn't a great platform for writing, but I only write public long-form things a few times year, so I don't feel like going to another platform for it.

EdSharkey 8y ago
Hey John, thanks for Doom and Quake. I had lots of fun, and you and Abrash introduced me to 3D rendering techniques and advanced assembly programming techniques for which I am grateful since those skills put a little bread on the table long, long ago. Would you ever team up with Romero to make another game? I'd love to see your guys' take on a battle royale game. I'm having lots of fun with PUBG, but a game like that needs your engine optimization-fu.
0xfeba 8y ago
Maybe someone will write a metablogging platform that posts to WordPress, Facebook, Twitter (in multiple tweets!), Instagram, etc. all with one button. RAIC, redundant array of inexpensive content. Actually, I'd be surprised if this didn't already exist.
- gowld 8y ago
  Yes, there is a whole market. https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-at-once https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-at-... http://everypost.me/ http://everypost.me/ etc
- praneshp 8y ago
  Ha, I cannot resist pointing you to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVskziCc4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVskziCc4w
dgritsko 8y ago
I specifically remember your quote "It is always better to not have a problem than to mitigate it" from the "Latency Mitigation Strategies" post on #AltDevBlogADay. It was so poignant to me that I wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to my monitor, where it remained for several years thereafter. Bummer that that content is no longer available (although I found a mirror of that particular post here: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigation-strategies/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigati...)

hinkley 8y ago

nabla9 kinda sidles up to this, but some will argue that John Carmack was one of, if not the, original bloggers. He used his .plan file on his unix account to post long musings on things he was concerned about in an era when running your own website was scary, or at least too trendy for people. The problem with maintaining a blog indefinitely is the same problem I see with musicians. The really profound stuff you come up with shows up at a slow rate. After ten years of obscurity you have years of material stored up. But you write what you know for a while and you don't know that much more than you did when you started. What goes on your 2nd or 3rd album? New good stuff, or the things that weren't good enough for your debut? If you're smart you stop for a while until you have enough good stuff again.