3 ms·

I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements. "eventually id Tech 5 is going

by RunSet 14d ago

I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements. "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id"[0] "Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs"[1] By sheer coincidence, John Carmack is peddling machine generated code.[2] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg... [1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832 https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832 [2] https://80.lv/articles/john-carmack-s-agi-startup-keen-technologies-raises-usd20-milllion https://80.lv/articles/john-carmack-s-agi-startup-keen-techn...

the_interloper 14d ago
1st link is broken
- RunSet 14d ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374 https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg...
tclancy 14d ago
I have a new theory as of this moment. Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Before you stone me, remember every prophet was downvoted in their own forum.
- zulux 14d ago
  The nice thing about religious faith is that most minds can hold only one at a time. I may believe in an oddly resurrected deity who took the shape of a man, but I don't have room for anything crazier. "We are fools for Christ's sake." 1 Corinthians 4:10
  - tclancy 14d ago
    Sure, but it is that Christ, Buddha or any of the other incarnations of the same idea? I am right there with you, believe it or not, but don’t John 3:16 the wrong football game.
  - acyou 13d ago
    Is that the nice thing about religious faith? Polytheism seems somewhat more tolerant of others. And religious pluralism takes in one step further. I am sure about few things, but it seems to me that monotheism and religious exclusivism at some times represent the worst aspects and outcomes of religious faith.
  - huurtehoog 13d ago
    Whatever your view of religion, you are not very good at literary analysis. The verse you quote, in full: "We have given up our wisdom for Christ, but you have insight because of Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored, but we are dishonored" Not quite the same of what you imply is it?
    - magarnicle 13d ago
      But now I don't know what you think it means. Who do you think "you" and "we" are in this quote?
      - huurtehoog 13d ago
        Go read Corinthians? I'm just pointing out it was quoted halfway through to make it sound like Paul just wrote "we dumb" in a letter.
        magarnicle 13d ago
        Right. But you didn't quote it in full either, so I couldn't figure out what you thought it said. So yeah, there's a base unit of meaning which is well beyond one or two verses (something I wish the church would learn).
  - 13d ago
- socalgal2 14d ago
  I see it as those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits. Those that haven't seen those benefits are still skeptical. Someone who's seen the benfits, knows, with proof, the benefits exist. They're like Copernicus who realized the plants go around the sun, not the earth. The others are still like those who look up, see the planets go around the sky, and can't believe the earth is not at the center. They then shout "you're lying, you're crazy, burn the hertic!"
  - JuniperMesos 14d ago
    The story of the discovery of heliocentricism is a lot more complex than this; the people who didn't immediately accept heliocentric theories (including the ancient Greeks - look up Aristarchus) often had good, scientific reasons for doing so. Or just look up at the sky at night yourself and ask yourself how you, personally, would confirm it if someone told you that what you see in the sky is better explained by the Earth moving around the sun than the sun moving around the Earth.
  - Planktonne 13d ago
    > those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits The massive benefits should be visible to outside observers as well, but where are they?
    - Daishiman 13d ago
      Yes. People see orgs tackling more problems and resolving bugs faster.
      - Planktonne 13d ago
        I don't agree that people do see that, and if they do, it's hardly an overwhelming trend.
        Daishiman 13d ago
        I see my org delivering twice as many features and implementing way more tools that actually solve problems. The issue is that doesn’t necessarily mean that customers will pay more, as most of the features of software are not actually core.
- JuniperMesos 14d ago
  > Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Why do you characterize people you disagree with as having "complete unquestioning fealty" to any of these figures who did something interesting with technology in the past? Seriously, why do you think that accurately characterizes anyone's view? I think this observation that John Carmack made on Twitter has some merit to it - it doesn't mean that I worship John Carmack as my god, or even that I think he's necessarily correct about any other issue. And why would I need to do either of those things to think that the one specific observation of his that we're talking about in this thread has merit to it?
  - tclancy 13d ago
    I am not lumping everyone in, more observing we are still amplifying the signal from radio stations that should have ceased broadcasting years ago.
    - JuniperMesos 13d ago
      I don't think that John Carmack or any of the other people you mentioned are categorically not worth listening to because in some cases the accomplishments that originally made them famous are decades old. If you think that Carmack is wrong on this specific point, make an argument for why; I for one don't think he's wrong, and I think that putting him into a category of people who "should have ceased broadcasting decades ago" is simply avoiding engaging with what he actually said.
  - bitwize 13d ago
    One of the great joys of following guys I admire like Carmack is the little smile I get when I see one of his tweets and go, "yeah, John Carmack was totally wrong about that." For example he argued that UI buttons should act on press rather than waiting for the release, and it's been a UI principle for decades that once a button is pressed you wait for the release on the button, giving the user one last chance to back out of a destructive operation by letting them move the pointer off the button and release. And I was like no, I don't care if you wrote Quake, or the Principia Mathematica, don't fuck with my UI expectations. Carmack has cheerfully admitted to being wrong in the past, for example admitting that the Saturn port of Doom should have used the Saturn's hardware primitives for a smoother experience rather than a faithful replication of the PC's BSP renderer which made it slow. When brilliant guys like him are wrong, they often are in profound ways.
Insanity 14d ago
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It makes more sense to read his 'public statements' and judge them individually rather than in aggregate. No one is correct all the time. As for this current post (just a tweet really, public statement sounds overly official), I think he's making sense. If you don't follow industry trends, you'll eventually be out of touch. Whether you're a senior software engineer or engineering manager, keeping current with the evolution of tech will make you better at your job. Today that happens to be related to following AI developments, but it applied equally to learning higher level programming languages in the 90s, or big data engineering practices in the 2010s.

by RunSet 14d ago

the_interloper 14d ago

1st link is broken

RunSet 14d ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374 https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg...

tclancy 14d ago

I have a new theory as of this moment. Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Before you stone me, remember every prophet was downvoted in their own forum.

zulux 14d ago
The nice thing about religious faith is that most minds can hold only one at a time. I may believe in an oddly resurrected deity who took the shape of a man, but I don't have room for anything crazier. "We are fools for Christ's sake." 1 Corinthians 4:10
- tclancy 14d ago
  Sure, but it is that Christ, Buddha or any of the other incarnations of the same idea? I am right there with you, believe it or not, but don’t John 3:16 the wrong football game.
- acyou 13d ago
  Is that the nice thing about religious faith? Polytheism seems somewhat more tolerant of others. And religious pluralism takes in one step further. I am sure about few things, but it seems to me that monotheism and religious exclusivism at some times represent the worst aspects and outcomes of religious faith.
- huurtehoog 13d ago
  Whatever your view of religion, you are not very good at literary analysis. The verse you quote, in full: "We have given up our wisdom for Christ, but you have insight because of Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored, but we are dishonored" Not quite the same of what you imply is it?
  - magarnicle 13d ago
    But now I don't know what you think it means. Who do you think "you" and "we" are in this quote?
    - huurtehoog 13d ago
      Go read Corinthians? I'm just pointing out it was quoted halfway through to make it sound like Paul just wrote "we dumb" in a letter.
      - magarnicle 13d ago
        Right. But you didn't quote it in full either, so I couldn't figure out what you thought it said. So yeah, there's a base unit of meaning which is well beyond one or two verses (something I wish the church would learn).
- 13d ago
socalgal2 14d ago
I see it as those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits. Those that haven't seen those benefits are still skeptical. Someone who's seen the benfits, knows, with proof, the benefits exist. They're like Copernicus who realized the plants go around the sun, not the earth. The others are still like those who look up, see the planets go around the sky, and can't believe the earth is not at the center. They then shout "you're lying, you're crazy, burn the hertic!"
- JuniperMesos 14d ago
  The story of the discovery of heliocentricism is a lot more complex than this; the people who didn't immediately accept heliocentric theories (including the ancient Greeks - look up Aristarchus) often had good, scientific reasons for doing so. Or just look up at the sky at night yourself and ask yourself how you, personally, would confirm it if someone told you that what you see in the sky is better explained by the Earth moving around the sun than the sun moving around the Earth.
- Planktonne 13d ago
  > those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits The massive benefits should be visible to outside observers as well, but where are they?
  - Daishiman 13d ago
    Yes. People see orgs tackling more problems and resolving bugs faster.
    - Planktonne 13d ago
      I don't agree that people do see that, and if they do, it's hardly an overwhelming trend.
      - Daishiman 13d ago
        I see my org delivering twice as many features and implementing way more tools that actually solve problems. The issue is that doesn’t necessarily mean that customers will pay more, as most of the features of software are not actually core.
JuniperMesos 14d ago
> Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Why do you characterize people you disagree with as having "complete unquestioning fealty" to any of these figures who did something interesting with technology in the past? Seriously, why do you think that accurately characterizes anyone's view? I think this observation that John Carmack made on Twitter has some merit to it - it doesn't mean that I worship John Carmack as my god, or even that I think he's necessarily correct about any other issue. And why would I need to do either of those things to think that the one specific observation of his that we're talking about in this thread has merit to it?
- tclancy 13d ago
  I am not lumping everyone in, more observing we are still amplifying the signal from radio stations that should have ceased broadcasting years ago.
  - JuniperMesos 13d ago
    I don't think that John Carmack or any of the other people you mentioned are categorically not worth listening to because in some cases the accomplishments that originally made them famous are decades old. If you think that Carmack is wrong on this specific point, make an argument for why; I for one don't think he's wrong, and I think that putting him into a category of people who "should have ceased broadcasting decades ago" is simply avoiding engaging with what he actually said.
- bitwize 13d ago
  One of the great joys of following guys I admire like Carmack is the little smile I get when I see one of his tweets and go, "yeah, John Carmack was totally wrong about that." For example he argued that UI buttons should act on press rather than waiting for the release, and it's been a UI principle for decades that once a button is pressed you wait for the release on the button, giving the user one last chance to back out of a destructive operation by letting them move the pointer off the button and release. And I was like no, I don't care if you wrote Quake, or the Principia Mathematica, don't fuck with my UI expectations. Carmack has cheerfully admitted to being wrong in the past, for example admitting that the Saturn port of Doom should have used the Saturn's hardware primitives for a smoother experience rather than a faithful replication of the PC's BSP renderer which made it slow. When brilliant guys like him are wrong, they often are in profound ways.

Insanity 14d ago

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It makes more sense to read his 'public statements' and judge them individually rather than in aggregate. No one is correct all the time. As for this current post (just a tweet really, public statement sounds overly official), I think he's making sense. If you don't follow industry trends, you'll eventually be out of touch. Whether you're a senior software engineer or engineering manager, keeping current with the evolution of tech will make you better at your job. Today that happens to be related to following AI developments, but it applied equally to learning higher level programming languages in the 90s, or big data engineering practices in the 2010s.