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Yet another Carmack worship story. He is a great engineer, but let's not overhype this. It started with the legendary square root function. Which lost its lege

Yet another Carmack worship story. He is a great engineer, but let's not overhype this. It started with the legendary square root function. Which lost its legendary status once it turned out Carmack wasn't the author. Now it is about standard BSP technique from Computer graphics text books from that era. There is also hype about Carmack solving AGI by 2030, when he is yet to publish a single widely cited AI paper. EDIT: I am guilty of reading the first couple of paragraphs and assuming this was Carmack worship. My bad! Leaving the original comment, mostly as is.

smoldesu 4y ago
FWIW, the inverse square root function wasn't popularized by Carmack. Most people shared it because they were amused by the confused comments surrounding it, and how it demonstrated an extremely vertical slice of optimization. Treating anyone like a rockstar is a bad idea, but Carmacks and Wozniaks deserve the praise more than the Zuckerbergs and Jobs' out there.
royjacobs 4y ago
Let's not underhype it, either: It seems you are underestimating the impact that Doom had on PC gaming when it came out. Using BSP trees to perform zero overdraw rendering definitely was not something that had been done before on consumer level hardware and it can definitely be argued that applying them this way for Doom was a stroke of genius.
- coliveira 4y ago
  You're setting the bar for "genius" too low, which unfortunately is commonplace in computer programming. If you take something that already exists and apply it to your code I don't call it genius. Hi quality programming, yes, but genius no.
  - royjacobs 4y ago
    I didn't realise I was not allowed to set my own bars, though :)
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Rather than argue about the definition of a word, I'd rather ask what examples of real genius in programming that you can offer.
    - random314 4y ago
      Fabrice Bellard
EamonnMR 4y ago
The story of tracing the magic number back is really fun and it's interesting to see how the trade of computer graphics programming was passed down from one company to another. I don't think it's legendary status was at all diminished when it turns out not to have been Carmack's invention. https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/ https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120920120948/http://blog.quenta.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120920120948/http://blog.quent...
ajuc 4y ago
Carmack is a great programmer because he consistently produces solid, fast code, not because he has groundbreaking ideas. It's similar with Linus. He didn't invented monolithic kernels, UNIX, distributed version control. He "just" wrote good implementations. Turns out brilliant ideas are overrated in programming, what matters is execution and daily grind.
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  > Turns out brilliant ideas are overrated in programming, what matters is execution and daily grind. You also have to be good at finding the brilliant ideas that are worth using.
  - manv1 4y ago
    You need to understand the problem, understand what you're trying to do, and understand how this abstract solution maps to your problem. Then you have to implement it.
Ygg2 4y ago
What do you mean not worship Jiu-Jitsu practicioner, Luddite Nemesis, Jace Hall asphyxiatior, and master of the Anti-Life equation - John Carmack?
cwillu 4y ago
From the Carmack worship story: “So Carmack was not the first person to think of using BSP trees in a real-time graphics simulation. Of course, it’s one thing to anticipate that BSP trees might be used this way and another thing to actually do it. But even in the implementation Carmack may have had more guidance than is commonly assumed.”
- random314 4y ago
  I am guilty of reading the first couple of paragraphs and assuming this was Carmack worship. My bad!
  - cwillu 4y ago
    Honey for the poison.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Yeah, I don't think we read the same article. This isn't a Carmack worship article.
dmbaggett 4y ago
As someone working at the same time as him on similar problems, I honestly and sincerely disagree. At the time my reaction was "this is space cadet stuff". 486 hardware was really slow, and the idea of doing any kind of real computational geometry back then was incredibly far-fetched. Until he showed it wasn't.

smoldesu 4y ago

FWIW, the inverse square root function wasn't popularized by Carmack. Most people shared it because they were amused by the confused comments surrounding it, and how it demonstrated an extremely vertical slice of optimization. Treating anyone like a rockstar is a bad idea, but Carmacks and Wozniaks deserve the praise more than the Zuckerbergs and Jobs' out there.

royjacobs 4y ago

Let's not underhype it, either: It seems you are underestimating the impact that Doom had on PC gaming when it came out. Using BSP trees to perform zero overdraw rendering definitely was not something that had been done before on consumer level hardware and it can definitely be argued that applying them this way for Doom was a stroke of genius.

coliveira 4y ago
You're setting the bar for "genius" too low, which unfortunately is commonplace in computer programming. If you take something that already exists and apply it to your code I don't call it genius. Hi quality programming, yes, but genius no.
- royjacobs 4y ago
  I didn't realise I was not allowed to set my own bars, though :)
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Rather than argue about the definition of a word, I'd rather ask what examples of real genius in programming that you can offer.
  - random314 4y ago
    Fabrice Bellard

EamonnMR 4y ago

The story of tracing the magic number back is really fun and it's interesting to see how the trade of computer graphics programming was passed down from one company to another. I don't think it's legendary status was at all diminished when it turns out not to have been Carmack's invention. https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/ https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120920120948/http://blog.quenta.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120920120948/http://blog.quent...

ajuc 4y ago

Carmack is a great programmer because he consistently produces solid, fast code, not because he has groundbreaking ideas. It's similar with Linus. He didn't invented monolithic kernels, UNIX, distributed version control. He "just" wrote good implementations. Turns out brilliant ideas are overrated in programming, what matters is execution and daily grind.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago
> Turns out brilliant ideas are overrated in programming, what matters is execution and daily grind. You also have to be good at finding the brilliant ideas that are worth using.
- manv1 4y ago
  You need to understand the problem, understand what you're trying to do, and understand how this abstract solution maps to your problem. Then you have to implement it.

Ygg2 4y ago

What do you mean not worship Jiu-Jitsu practicioner, Luddite Nemesis, Jace Hall asphyxiatior, and master of the Anti-Life equation - John Carmack?

cwillu 4y ago

From the Carmack worship story: “So Carmack was not the first person to think of using BSP trees in a real-time graphics simulation. Of course, it’s one thing to anticipate that BSP trees might be used this way and another thing to actually do it. But even in the implementation Carmack may have had more guidance than is commonly assumed.”

random314 4y ago
I am guilty of reading the first couple of paragraphs and assuming this was Carmack worship. My bad!
- cwillu 4y ago
  Honey for the poison.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Yeah, I don't think we read the same article. This isn't a Carmack worship article.

dmbaggett 4y ago

As someone working at the same time as him on similar problems, I honestly and sincerely disagree. At the time my reaction was "this is space cadet stuff". 486 hardware was really slow, and the idea of doing any kind of real computational geometry back then was incredibly far-fetched. Until he showed it wasn't.