Quotes by John Carmack

About John Carmack:

John D. Carmack is an American game programmer and the co-founder of Id Software. Carmack was the lead programmer of the Id video games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage and their sequels. Carmack is best known for his innovations in 3D graphics, such as his famous Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes, and is also a rocketry enthusiast and the founder and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace. In August 2013, Carmack took the position of CTO at Oculus VR.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.

John Carmack

I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming - the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and Internet play, game mods, and so on.

John Carmack

Developing games for the PC and consoles is all about everything and the kitchen sink. In many ways, you don't have design decisions to make. You do it all. So I enjoy going back to making decisions about what's important as I'm working on a game.

John Carmack

Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.

John Carmack

The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.

John Carmack

Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can, because I'm in it for the love of programming.

John Carmack

The speed of light sucks.

John Carmack

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

John Carmack

Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do.

John Carmack

I'd rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game.

John Carmack

The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC.

John Carmack

I've said before that I'm a remarkably unsentimental person.

John Carmack

Everybody's saturated with the marketing hype of next-generation consoles. They are wonderful, but the truth is that they are as powerful as a high end PC is right now.

John Carmack

Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.

John Carmack

Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

John Carmack

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.

John Carmack

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Carmack
  • DescriptionAmerican programmer
  • AliasesJohn D. Carmack
  • BornAugust 20, 1970
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionChief Technology Officer; Aerospace Engineer; Programmer
  • AwardsEmmy Award