For me, while I do take a lot of pride in shipping a great product, the achievements along the way are more memorable. I don’t remember any of our older product

For me, while I do take a lot of pride in shipping a great product, the achievements along the way are more memorable. I don’t remember any of our older product releases, but I remember the important insights all the way back to using CRTC wraparound for infinate smooth scrolling in Keen (actually, all the way back to understanding the virtues of structures over parallel arrays in apple II assembly language..). Knowledge builds on knowledge. Gems like this really show why Carmack has been such a successful developer. I found his week-long getaways an interesting concept; I can definitely relate to distractions often seeming like a really big problem in terms of momentum. These days with the internet I think it would take much more to isolate yourself and still be productive.