4 ms·

> Old John Carmack at Id Software took one look at that trash and said, "Screw that!" and decided to write towards another API: OpenGL. "Old John Carmack" make

by Cushman 14y ago

> Old John Carmack at Id Software took one look at that trash and said, "Screw that!" and decided to write towards another API: OpenGL. "Old John Carmack" makes me think he's some sort of half-myth crazy coot mountain man, which made me realize something: There will some day be mythology about computer programmers. Whoa.

Turing_Machine 14y ago
There already is. Stories about Seymour Cray building (and then burning) a boat every year, tons of stories about Woz, tons of stories about rms, tons of stories about any number of the other greats, some true, some embellished, some made up from whole cloth.
knome 14y ago
If you mean one day people will remember the names of programmers in a mythological manner, I doubt it. If you mean there will exist a mythos of programmers. Their persons. Their ideals. Their exploits. There are books: "Dealers of Lightening", "What the Dormouse Said", "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution"; and beyond them a large amount of information available only online ( textfiles.com is fantastic ). Things like 2600 and phrack. All of the old 'zine releases made by various cracking groups, like "Legion of Doom", where at this point all that remains are various communiques thanking lists of pseudonyms that will likely never be linked to actual names. Older stories, like Mel. The Woz's hacks and Gates' angry letter to early software copiers. The lexical analysis to pin n3td3v as Gobbles Security ( still unconfirmed afaik ). Some of the older bits by related groups, such as phreakers, aren't necessarily programming mythos, but fall into the same crowds and history folders, individuals like Captain Crunch. There are Torvalds and Tanenbaum's humorous exchanges. The first worm. utf8's placemat birth. Larry Wall's idiosyncrasies. Well, all programmers idiosyncrasies. esr. rms. dmr. ken. Anyone else that can be identified by a tla, plus or minus an underscore prefix. Hacker ethic, free software and open source manifestos, deconstructions, apologies, rebellions and dismissals aplenty. Hackers v crackers and demoscene's birth from the latter. Spacewar, nethack, rogue and a thousand MUDs to idle your time away. Many other things that haven't popped off the top of my head. There won't some day be a mythos such as this. It is here now. And it will only grow further.
jere 14y ago
There has, is, and will continue to be. Seeing that Carmack practically invented the FPS genre over 20 years ago and he's still writing games today, I view him as a mythical figure. http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
pablasso 14y ago
I know he has contributed a lot, but I didn't know he started OpenGL, neither could find a source on that. EDIT: Oh, disregard that, it seems that I can't read. He "wrote" for OpenGL, not wrote OpenGL itself.
sehugg 14y ago
I think of him also as the first programmer to start a public blog (via his .plan files - http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html)

by Cushman 14y ago

Turing_Machine 14y ago

There already is. Stories about Seymour Cray building (and then burning) a boat every year, tons of stories about Woz, tons of stories about rms, tons of stories about any number of the other greats, some true, some embellished, some made up from whole cloth.

knome 14y ago

If you mean one day people will remember the names of programmers in a mythological manner, I doubt it. If you mean there will exist a mythos of programmers. Their persons. Their ideals. Their exploits. There are books: "Dealers of Lightening", "What the Dormouse Said", "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution"; and beyond them a large amount of information available only online ( textfiles.com is fantastic ). Things like 2600 and phrack. All of the old 'zine releases made by various cracking groups, like "Legion of Doom", where at this point all that remains are various communiques thanking lists of pseudonyms that will likely never be linked to actual names. Older stories, like Mel. The Woz's hacks and Gates' angry letter to early software copiers. The lexical analysis to pin n3td3v as Gobbles Security ( still unconfirmed afaik ). Some of the older bits by related groups, such as phreakers, aren't necessarily programming mythos, but fall into the same crowds and history folders, individuals like Captain Crunch. There are Torvalds and Tanenbaum's humorous exchanges. The first worm. utf8's placemat birth. Larry Wall's idiosyncrasies. Well, all programmers idiosyncrasies. esr. rms. dmr. ken. Anyone else that can be identified by a tla, plus or minus an underscore prefix. Hacker ethic, free software and open source manifestos, deconstructions, apologies, rebellions and dismissals aplenty. Hackers v crackers and demoscene's birth from the latter. Spacewar, nethack, rogue and a thousand MUDs to idle your time away. Many other things that haven't popped off the top of my head. There won't some day be a mythos such as this. It is here now. And it will only grow further.

jere 14y ago

There has, is, and will continue to be. Seeing that Carmack practically invented the FPS genre over 20 years ago and he's still writing games today, I view him as a mythical figure. http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...

pablasso 14y ago

I know he has contributed a lot, but I didn't know he started OpenGL, neither could find a source on that. EDIT: Oh, disregard that, it seems that I can't read. He "wrote" for OpenGL, not wrote OpenGL itself.

sehugg 14y ago

I think of him also as the first programmer to start a public blog (via his .plan files - http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html http://floodyberry.com/carmack/plan.html)