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It's refreshing how humble Carmack always sounds in his Twitter feed. I've found that old school game programmers tend to be hardline and a bit belligerent abou

It's refreshing how humble Carmack always sounds in his Twitter feed. I've found that old school game programmers tend to be hardline and a bit belligerent about their code; Carmack, on the other hand, often tweets about going against his better instincts and exploring new technologies. Not a lot of sarcasm or negativity at all. If only more people had Twitter streams as pleasant and informative as his!

rtpg 12y ago
I think this has been a theme with him the past couple of years. He's gone into Haskell territory, and has recently been an extremely vocal proponent of immutable structures (coming from the man behind some pretttty fast programs, that's a nice cold shower for a lot of people), and generally higher-level thinking. I think this is a consequence of a lot of these languages getting a lot nicer tooling recently, as well as other FP ideas being pulled into newer languages.
Zelphyr 12y ago
I second this. Its something we can all take a lesson from. Unfortunately I see too FAR many programmers who model their persona's after Kanye West. I had the great fortune of meeting Steve Bourne, inventor of /bin/sh. If ever there was a guy who could accept any and all accolades it would be him. Instead he was most gracious and humble and spent all his time showing interest in our work as well as answering our questions about the invention of the shell and Unix. Speaking of; did you know he was the first alpha tester of Unix? When Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie were writing it they would hand the magnetic tapes over to Steve Bourne and have him test it.
- anothermoron 12y ago
  > I second this. Its something we can all take a lesson from. Unfortunately I see too FAR many programmers who model their persona's after Kanye West. Most indie dev. are like that, they don't have anything to show but act like they know everything and that everything they say is pure gold.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    That's because they need to raise money before starting on building their game. Hip startup people have similar traits, and inflate their idea in order to get more funding. That's how marketing works, basically.
    - vans 12y ago
      And that why we (developpers, scientists, ...) hate marketing lessons :p
- nkozyra 12y ago
  Less Kanye West and more Linus. And I'm of the opinion that an attitude and approach like Linus' is fine - if you're Linus. I think it's sort of made its way around as the way to act if you know what you're doing and that's a shame. I know a lot of great devs who are lost in the shuffle for not being boisterous enough.
  - bsder 12y ago
    > And I'm of the opinion that an attitude and approach like Linus' is fine - if you're Linus. I'm of the opinion that it's not. And, it provides a really poor example to the younger people in the field. I've known a lot of programmers. Many of them far smarter than Linus. Funnily enough, the better they were; the nicer they were.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      I don't think you know anything about Linus beyond his widely publicized outbursts (Which also means you have no idea how smart, or not, he is).
      - moomin 12y ago
        OMG is he a 10x engineer? 11??? Seriously, there's no productivity benchmark beyond which you shouldn't treat people with respect. There are broken cultures where you can get away with it, but you'll still be an asshole. Linus is an asshole not because it's some deep essential part of his nature, he's an asshole because people give him a free pass.
        pyre 12y ago
        Parent post was asking whether your knowledge of how much of an "asshole" Linus is comes from only reading the publicized outbursts, and not interacting on a day to day basis. While it's not preferable, I think that we can be understanding of the fact that people can sometimes have outbursts due to stressors in their life. That said, whenever I've seen people bashing a Linus outburst, I've gone and read said outburst. It's never as bad as the "tech press" make it out to be.
- gjtorikian 12y ago
  I feel absolutely idiotic to not have known that the Bourne shell was actually named after a Mr. Bourne. I just assumed it was an acronym or something.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    You never saw that matryoshka doll book? http://www.amazon.com/System-International-Computer-Science-Series/dp/0201137917 http://www.amazon.com/System-International-Computer-Science-... It was somewhat outdated by late 80's but it was still "the book" for newcomers to Unix environments. Next, look up what AWK stands for...
staunch 12y ago
Carmack is constantly challenging himself. A trait common among masters. Louis CK is so good at comedy because he throws away all his material each year. Carmack used to practically write a new game engine every year. Now he's doing even more challenging work than that.
- agmcleod 12y ago
  Man i'd love to do that. Explore game dev with different languages. Try and code a fresh web game engine purely using webgl. Naturally i get busy with other things :)
- evincarofautumn 12y ago
  If what you do over and over again is throw away your work with the goal of writing a better thing, then you can get really good at writing new things. It’s a clever way to think about practice.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  Arthur Whitney, author of A+,k and kdb/q always starts from scratch when he develops a new version of his db. From scratch means throwing away even the lowest-level routines like basic string operations and low-level file i/o.
  - swah 12y ago
    And the source code is bizarre but... works for him.
- astrodust 12y ago
  He's certainly not afraid to leave his comfort zone and try something completely tangental, like making rockets or working with VR hardware. He's always been humble, engaging, friendly, and most of all, passionate about what he does without becoming fanatical about it.
keyle 12y ago
I like that he always tweets about his discoveries. Most of them you don't really understand, but some are common discoveries we all eventually make. Either way, his tweets are always entertaining.
webnrrd2k 12y ago
Erik Naggum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum]
mentat 12y ago
Back in the day it was always interesting to watch his finger posts before all this newfangled tweeting.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
badpenny 12y ago
The only thing I've admired as much as his intelligence has been his child-like enthusiasm.
higherpurpose 12y ago
It's a shame he ended up at Facebook of all the places he could've worked for - Space X, Tesla, Apple, maybe even Google X. Such a waste.
- nekopa 12y ago
  I don't view it that way. If anything, finally some of Facebook's money is going towards an end I like. Remember that he is not working on Facebook, they just gave his company lots of cash and get to say they own it.
- AlexandrB 12y ago
  Technically he's at Oculus at Facebook. I think if the Oculus team was to go away he would probably walk. Not sure how this is any worse than Google X or Apple unless you think Google/Apple is intrinsically better than Facebook somehow.
- archagon 12y ago
  The guy's only 44! With luck, he's only at the midpoint of his career.
vans 12y ago
Exactly, and he takes time to consider your replies and reply himself. No hard feeeling, no shitty internet trolling, just peacefull argument. Refreshing !

rtpg 12y ago

I think this has been a theme with him the past couple of years. He's gone into Haskell territory, and has recently been an extremely vocal proponent of immutable structures (coming from the man behind some pretttty fast programs, that's a nice cold shower for a lot of people), and generally higher-level thinking. I think this is a consequence of a lot of these languages getting a lot nicer tooling recently, as well as other FP ideas being pulled into newer languages.

Zelphyr 12y ago

I second this. Its something we can all take a lesson from. Unfortunately I see too FAR many programmers who model their persona's after Kanye West. I had the great fortune of meeting Steve Bourne, inventor of /bin/sh. If ever there was a guy who could accept any and all accolades it would be him. Instead he was most gracious and humble and spent all his time showing interest in our work as well as answering our questions about the invention of the shell and Unix. Speaking of; did you know he was the first alpha tester of Unix? When Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie were writing it they would hand the magnetic tapes over to Steve Bourne and have him test it.

anothermoron 12y ago
> I second this. Its something we can all take a lesson from. Unfortunately I see too FAR many programmers who model their persona's after Kanye West. Most indie dev. are like that, they don't have anything to show but act like they know everything and that everything they say is pure gold.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  That's because they need to raise money before starting on building their game. Hip startup people have similar traits, and inflate their idea in order to get more funding. That's how marketing works, basically.
  - vans 12y ago
    And that why we (developpers, scientists, ...) hate marketing lessons :p
nkozyra 12y ago
Less Kanye West and more Linus. And I'm of the opinion that an attitude and approach like Linus' is fine - if you're Linus. I think it's sort of made its way around as the way to act if you know what you're doing and that's a shame. I know a lot of great devs who are lost in the shuffle for not being boisterous enough.
- bsder 12y ago
  > And I'm of the opinion that an attitude and approach like Linus' is fine - if you're Linus. I'm of the opinion that it's not. And, it provides a really poor example to the younger people in the field. I've known a lot of programmers. Many of them far smarter than Linus. Funnily enough, the better they were; the nicer they were.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    I don't think you know anything about Linus beyond his widely publicized outbursts (Which also means you have no idea how smart, or not, he is).
    - moomin 12y ago
      OMG is he a 10x engineer? 11??? Seriously, there's no productivity benchmark beyond which you shouldn't treat people with respect. There are broken cultures where you can get away with it, but you'll still be an asshole. Linus is an asshole not because it's some deep essential part of his nature, he's an asshole because people give him a free pass.
      - pyre 12y ago
        Parent post was asking whether your knowledge of how much of an "asshole" Linus is comes from only reading the publicized outbursts, and not interacting on a day to day basis. While it's not preferable, I think that we can be understanding of the fact that people can sometimes have outbursts due to stressors in their life. That said, whenever I've seen people bashing a Linus outburst, I've gone and read said outburst. It's never as bad as the "tech press" make it out to be.
gjtorikian 12y ago
I feel absolutely idiotic to not have known that the Bourne shell was actually named after a Mr. Bourne. I just assumed it was an acronym or something.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  You never saw that matryoshka doll book? http://www.amazon.com/System-International-Computer-Science-Series/dp/0201137917 http://www.amazon.com/System-International-Computer-Science-... It was somewhat outdated by late 80's but it was still "the book" for newcomers to Unix environments. Next, look up what AWK stands for...

staunch 12y ago

Carmack is constantly challenging himself. A trait common among masters. Louis CK is so good at comedy because he throws away all his material each year. Carmack used to practically write a new game engine every year. Now he's doing even more challenging work than that.

agmcleod 12y ago
Man i'd love to do that. Explore game dev with different languages. Try and code a fresh web game engine purely using webgl. Naturally i get busy with other things :)
evincarofautumn 12y ago
If what you do over and over again is throw away your work with the goal of writing a better thing, then you can get really good at writing new things. It’s a clever way to think about practice.
sz4kerto 12y ago
Arthur Whitney, author of A+,k and kdb/q always starts from scratch when he develops a new version of his db. From scratch means throwing away even the lowest-level routines like basic string operations and low-level file i/o.
- swah 12y ago
  And the source code is bizarre but... works for him.
astrodust 12y ago
He's certainly not afraid to leave his comfort zone and try something completely tangental, like making rockets or working with VR hardware. He's always been humble, engaging, friendly, and most of all, passionate about what he does without becoming fanatical about it.

keyle 12y ago

I like that he always tweets about his discoveries. Most of them you don't really understand, but some are common discoveries we all eventually make. Either way, his tweets are always entertaining.

webnrrd2k 12y ago

Erik Naggum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum]

mentat 12y ago

Back in the day it was always interesting to watch his finger posts before all this newfangled tweeting.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

badpenny 12y ago

The only thing I've admired as much as his intelligence has been his child-like enthusiasm.

higherpurpose 12y ago

It's a shame he ended up at Facebook of all the places he could've worked for - Space X, Tesla, Apple, maybe even Google X. Such a waste.

nekopa 12y ago
I don't view it that way. If anything, finally some of Facebook's money is going towards an end I like. Remember that he is not working on Facebook, they just gave his company lots of cash and get to say they own it.
AlexandrB 12y ago
Technically he's at Oculus at Facebook. I think if the Oculus team was to go away he would probably walk. Not sure how this is any worse than Google X or Apple unless you think Google/Apple is intrinsically better than Facebook somehow.
archagon 12y ago
The guy's only 44! With luck, he's only at the midpoint of his career.

vans 12y ago

Exactly, and he takes time to consider your replies and reply himself. No hard feeeling, no shitty internet trolling, just peacefull argument. Refreshing !