John Carmack Quotes

It's nice to have a game that sells a million copies.

Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.

But realistically, we don’t have that many problems at QuakeCon. If it was a football convention or something, there would probably be a lot more incidents.

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.

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."

The speed of light sucks.

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.

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

It's done, when it's done.

Programming in the abstract sense is what I really enjoy. I enjoy lots of different areas of it... I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment writing device drivers for Linux. I could also be having a good time writing a database manager or something because there are always interesting problems.

The Escalation programmers come from a completely different background, and the codebase is all STL this, boost that, fill-up-the-property list, dispatch the event, and delegate that. I had been harboring some suspicions that our big codebases might benefit from the application of some more of the various “modern” C++ design patterns, despite seeing other large game codebases suffer under them. I have since recanted that suspicion.

In the information age, the barriers [to entry into programming] just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

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.

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

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