John Carmack

Overview

Born
August 20, 1970 · Roeland Park, Kansas, USA
Birth name
John D. Carmack II
Nickname
- Jondi

Biography

Family

Spouse

Trivia

Has made enough money from id Software [us] that he really does not have to work anymore. This gives John "the freedom from anybody having the ability to have any leverage" over him and the freedom to drive his exotic cars. John owns a 600hp twin-turbo Ferrari F50 and a 1000hp twin-turbo V-12 Ferrari Testarossa GTO.
One of Carmack's favorite novels is Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky".
Every game released by Carmack's company has pushed the game and graphics envelopes to new levels, leading the next revolution in 3-D interactive games with both single and multiplayer technology. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) ushered in the concept of the first-person shooter game. This concept was forever changed when Doom (1993) was released, setting the benchmark for all 3-D action games. Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994) further built on this success. Quake (1996) set the new standard in multi-player, true 3-D, combat action games. Use of OpenGL 3-D accelerator cards for smoother 16-bit graphics and lighting effects were prevalent in Quake II (1997). Quake III: Arena (1999)'s graphics engine offers curved surface rendering and high detail textures to create visual features such as moody atmospheric fog and spectacular lighting.
Took a computer workstation with him on a honeymoon.
Older brother of Peter Carmack.

Quotes

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 offence after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly.
If you don't care enough to have something of your own to say, they shouldn't be quoting you.
Like most things, it is difficult to come up with a single weighted sum of the value of a programmer. I prefer to evaluate multiple axis independently. Programming is really just the mundane aspect of expressing a solution to a problem. There are talents that are specifically related to actually coding, but the real issue is being able to grasp problems and devise solutions that are detailed enough to actually be coded. Being able to clearly keep a lot of aspects of a complex system visualized is valuable. Having a good feel for time and storage that is flexible enough to work over a range of ten orders of magnitude is valuable. Experience is valuable. Knowing the literature is valuable. Being able to integrate methods and knowledge from different fields is valuable. Being consistent is valuable. Being creative is valuable. Focus is extremely important. Being able to maintain focus for the length of a project gets harder and harder as schedules grow longer, but it is critical to doing great work. I certainly respect the abilities of my primary competitors. Back in the DOOM days, Ken Silverman was extremely impressive, and today Tim Sweeny is producing much of value.