John Carmack Quotes

The speed of light sucks.

This is a bit more expensive than my previous turbo-Ferrari habit, but not too bad.

These are things I find enchanting and miraculous. I don’t have to be at the Grand Canyon to appreciate the way the world works, I can see that in reflections of light in my bathroom."

I do hear sometimes from programmers who are kind of sad that they don't have the opportunity to write game engines from scratch like I did and have it matter or make an impact...here's where some perspective really helps - I can remember when I was a teenager, I thought I had missed the Golden Age of 8-bit gaming, that I was never going to be Richard Garriott...time went by, and I got to make my own marks in things after that. And, in that time, I also see so many opportunities that have come by. The 90s PC wave was great - I was happy to be there, and I'm glad I took a swing and knocked one out of the park with that. But since then, we've seen mobile games, and web games, and free-to-play games, the Steam revolution...and now . And all of these are amazing! So, yeah, the opportunities that I had aren't there for people today - but there are new and better ones. And personally, I'm more excited about these than anything that's come before. So, thank you very much for this honor, but I'm just getting started.

A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in.

Honestly, I spend very little time thinking about past events, and I certainly don't have them ranked in any way. I look back and think that I have done a lot of good work over the years, but I am much more excited about what the future holds.

The biggest problem is that Java is really slow. On a pure cpu / memory / display / communications level, most modern cell phones should be considerably better gaming platforms than a Game Boy Advanced. With Java, on most phones you are left with about the CPU power of an original 4.77 mhz IBM PC, and lousy control over everything.

The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my 'gold standard', and it has been quite a while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand new extensions work as documented the first time I try them. When I have a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault. With anyone else's drivers, I assume it is their fault.

Note to self: Pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours.

Everything is an interpolation problem if you have enough data

I’m going to turn on every damn light in protest of Earth Hour. Lighting the darkness is fundamental to humanity's climb.

Advances in technology won’t be as significant as they have been in the past, most games won’t be materially improved by simulating every drop of water in the pond you are wading through. More resources can be profitably spent to make the creation process easier. How things will play out with respect to connectivity and where the data resides and processing takes place is still a very interesting question. The overlap and convergence between desktop computers, consoles, laptops, handheld gaming devices, and cell phones is also interesting. It is all still quite exciting.

I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offense after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly.

Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.