Carmack's ideas did a lot for my code. He has good insights around what to take from different problem domains in order to get a result that gets right to the p

Carmack's ideas did a lot for my code. He has good insights around what to take from different problem domains in order to get a result that gets right to the point and solves a specific category of error. You should never settle for "squishy" code that looks pretty just because: the code must do this, it cannot do that. Write it at the top of the function, and the best code will just go right to the goal without grabbing on to any boilerplate. That's something I was really missing in my earlier programming years, when all I saw were Java, Python and Ruby bloggers regurgitating OOP and Agile terms and I would try out their idea, marvel at the visible complexity of the abstraction, but then see it fail in a practical scenario. WTF.