You don't need millions of dollars

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/you-dont-need-millions-of-dollars.html

by nqureshi • 13 years ago

341 147 13 years ago

Damnit, after reading that I simply had to buy myself a copy of that book. These two guys were my childhood heros. Although my mom hated them thanks to all the hours I spent playing Keen or Doom and "not doing my homework"

gizmo4• 13 years ago

The book is really phenomenal. Highly, highly recommended.

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

The story is great but the writing was pretty marginal. There were scene jumps that the author didn't give any sort of hint or clue about. There we're complete misattributions of who was saying what.

I almost gave up on the book in the first few chapters.

altero10• 13 years ago

I find it ridiculous how IT, the industry with lowest entry barrier that ever existed, is often marked as sexist and elitist. Wanna program? Here is computer and manual, see you in 10 000 hours.

rubidium• 13 years ago

Sigh. Sexism and elitism are two characteristics of the culture. When people apply those labels, they are criticizing the participation in the culture, not just the learning of requisite skills.

Let's take apart your conjoining of sexism and elitism.

I don't think of the IT industry as elitist. There's certainly plenty of people in IT who think very highly of themselves, but that's just pride.

Sexism, however, is clearly present in the culture of IT. How big of a problem and the proper response to it is debated, but it's presence cannot be.

mordae• 13 years ago

Yeah, because after spending 10'000 hours around computers you get kinda confused if a girl walks in and starts talking the same language.

altero10• 13 years ago

It is impossible to argue with such generalization. Culture is sexist, ergo industry is sexist. I would only say that LA startup has very different culture from big corporation which still uses mainframes and Cobol.

_random_4• 13 years ago

It takes just a single brave woman to build second "Doom" or something like that. Somehow they figured out how to get education and voting rights. It's all about motivation.

001sky3• 13 years ago

Here is computer and manual, see you in 10 000 hours.

Isn't this exactly why it is sexist? [1]

[1] This (being tone deaf to social cues) wouldn't work to attract women in a social setting, so why would it work in a professional one? You're basically offering up a scenario that is more likely to create anxiety for women, and as a result they will (statistcally) self-select into a different activity.

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, I fail to see how logical and abstract things like a computer and a programming manual can be sexist. Please elaborate.

elohesra• 13 years ago

If it is called sexist for that reason, then the person using the term 'sexist' to describe the situation is comically misunderstanding the term. Sexism is basing one's beliefs about another on the basis of their sex, even if those beliefs don't actually relate to sex in any meaningful way. For instance, saying "The IT industry requires you to work hard, so women won't like it, because y'know, women can't stomach hard work" would be incredibly sexist. Conversely, saying anyone is free to join the IT industry is the exact opposite of sexist.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding around what sexism actually is: it's not sexist for something to simply not be favourable to some sample of a given sex. In order for something to be sexist it either has to make assumptions about the qualities of a given sex based only upon their gender, or be discriminatory toward a given sex based solely upon their gender. Discriminating on the basis of hours worked is the opposite of both of these.

altero10• 13 years ago

10 000 hours is about 3.5 years study. No need to take mortgage for university, no need to work for free 'to prove yourself'. Hell you can even babysit while doing it (as I am doing now while learning Scala)

kamaal2• 13 years ago

Sorry, I don't understand what the problem is exactly.

There are plenty of other professions, like say music, surgery, law, athletics, performance and endurance sports, teaching and many more that require a person to go outside the normal hours and work to practice, to achieve any sign of mastery. The fact that these professions demand such an work setting is not because they inherently like to discriminate against a minority, but that standards of quality are held at such a high bar you inevitable have to work that way to make a living there.

There is fundamentally nothing wrong with it.

pbhjpbhj• 13 years ago

So what are you suggesting. That you should offer different things to women because they're different. Surely that's the sexist bit.

If one offers the same thing to people regardless of their sex how can that be discriminating against them because of their sex?

theorique4• 13 years ago

Isn't it sexist of you to suggest that:

- women are so fragile and anxious that they need someone to hold their hand through the exercises, or

- women don't have the guts to persist through studying a difficult subject?

I certainly don't believe this to be true.

If the same, fair, treatment produces different outcomes, why does that make the treatment wrong?

rimantas• 13 years ago

I think work as a garbage man also has pretty low entry barrier, but it is still sexist, by HN's definition. Same goes for plumbers, though here entry barrier is higher.

theorique4• 13 years ago

Of the jobs with the highest risk of personal danger, the vast majority are male dominated. Some privilege!

dagw2• 13 years ago

work as a garbage man also has pretty low entry barrier

What makes you think that? There is very little ad hoc freelance work in the business and contracts to collect refuse are very tightly controlled. I imagine that winning those contacts as a newly started one man garbage collection company is almost unheard of. As such the barriers to entry as a plumber are much much lower.

officemonkey2• 13 years ago

That would be effective if programming was a solo activity. I suppose there are niches where that is so (eg: the majority of solo web-designers I know are female.)

But most programming jobs happen in companies (even if that "company" is virtual, like an open source project.) Look around your office. What's the prevalent culture? How accepting are you of people of other races, nationalities, sexes, sexual orientation? Which colleges and universities are represented?

Now, it's okay if you're successful and have a limited culture, but at least own up to your lack of diversity.

(and by "you" I mean the generic you, not "you" specifically altero.)

altero10• 13 years ago

My cofounder is women, no employees yet. My last team had 40% woman, some developers, one manager, two sysops. Team was distributed so most people in Europe, some in Southern America, about 30% in India. Questions about sexual orientation are not appropriated at my workplace.

Any more questions?

mattlutze• 13 years ago

I was in a dev shop for the last 6 years -- we had everything from no degree to PhD's. Eurpoeans, Eurasians, Indians, Caribbean and Americans. 20-30% women, and from 23 to 45 years old.

I know a lot of places that look like this.

I have no doubt the "bro culture" exists, but I think its prevalence is

1. In older (employee age wise) shops where, in those age groups, women simply hadn't been studying CS. 2. in very young startup environments where a team is likely to be a group of friends, vs. an externally sourced, interviewed workforce.

I don't think that the demographics of SV / SF are necessarily demonstrative of the industry as a whole.

kamaal2• 13 years ago

Freedom becomes a very big problem, when you are not ready to handle it. Because remember the moment you are free to do anything, you also own up the consequences and failures of your actions. Most people are uncomfortable to be in these situations.

People blame their school, teacher, parents, siblings, country, company and what not their current state. But if they were to sit down and ponder, even if the hurdles they state were actually(Most of the times they are not) something they couldn't overcome themselves- A scary scenario emerges where you are left staring at your deeper self. You know deep down inside you haven't done your part, and you are actually in search of something to blame to justify your own short comings.

Beyond all, there is great benefit in victim mindset. Our society shows far more empathy towards victims(Who are presumed innocent and exploited) than failures(Who are considered losers).

MayankGoyal• 13 years ago

That's exactly the thing Paul Graham mentioned in an interview: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/issie-lapowsky/how-paul-g...

They don't realize how independent they can be. When you're a child, your parents tell you what you're supposed to do. Then, you're in school, and you're part of this institution that tells you what to do. Then, you go work for some company, and the company tells you what to do. So people come in like baby birds in the nest and open their mouths, as if they're expecting us to drop food in. We have to tell them, "We're not your bosses. You're in charge now." Some of them are freaked out by that. Some people are meant to be employees. Other people discover they have wings and start flapping them. There's nothing like being thrown off a cliff to make you discover that you have wings.

I've been talking about entrepreneurship with some people, and realized how true the "Some people are meant to be employees" part is. Most people are so afraid of failing they aren't even willing to try for fear they might not be able to do something.

mortice• 13 years ago

please don't comment for another 10000 hours

Tyrannosaurs2• 13 years ago

What you're describing is the ability to program in isolation.

That's different to the ability to thrive in an industry where basic ability (which is what you'd develop with the manual, computer and time) is just one factor.

michaelochurch• 13 years ago

Ok, let's go...

The Isms in tech.

Sexist assholes exist in technology but are rare. I don't think I'm one, and I've only worked at one company where they were common, and that was a VC-funded company with MBA culture, and that's why there was so much sexism (among management). Plenty of these tech companies have the old, sexist MBA culture where women exist to make powerful men feel important, young, manly, etc.; but plenty more don't have that culture.

There's very little explicit classism. However, there is much indirect classism as a result of the severe ageism. If you age-grade peoples' careers harshly and discount accomplishments after 35, you're favoring people who had a head start (rich kids) while downgrading the people who worked hard for decades. That's a real problem but it doesn't exist because people explicitly favor the privileged. They don't. They're just prone to the same biases as everyone else, and thus are influenced by precociousness and pedigree. This is amplified by the groupthink in the VC community, and would be substantially less of a problem if there were more independent thought.

Why are many VCs ageist? (That's where the general "bro" culture comes from; it trickles down.) Because MBA culture (which is different from tech, the latter being far more evolved) is sexist and ageist, and also because a lot of these gatekeepers are middle-aged private-equity guys who did their 20s completely wrong (90-hour weeks) and are trying to live vicariously through young sociopaths whose careers they can make, in exchange for juicy tidbits about what their proteges did on the weekend ("chickenhawking"; see Michael Scott and Ryan Howard in The Office). Most VCs aren't that pathetic, but the groupthink favors the chickenhawk compliant (privileged, young, somewhat sociopathic, party-friendly) at the expense of the true technologists.

The real problem is the lack of fighters in tech, which leads to conformity and groupthink among the crowd that matters (VCs, top founders). Groupthink magnifies the biases of the defective few.

The real problem is that true technologists have done a poor job of protecting the culture; the real technology culture is far more meritocratic than the bastardized version the MBAs and private equity guys came up with. If we want fairness and a return to a maker-centric culture in the Valley and in the software industry in general, we can have it; but we have to get better at fighting for our own interests.

End Rant.

hrabago• 13 years ago

Just to be clear, it's sexist here in the US. It isn't necessarily so in other countries.

firstOrder• 13 years ago

Your posting is rife with an "elitist" mentality.

The Census asks people if they have a computer in their home...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/computer/publications/2011.html

...and one out of four households does not.

"Here is computer". Well, for one out of four households, no one has ever said to them "here is computer".

I used to volunteer at a hackerspace/ISP which gave away very old, cobbled together PCs to black kids in the nearby housing projects. For most of them, these cobbled together PCs from old DIMMs, hard drives, motherboards, etc. they were given were the only computer in their apartments. They lucked out being located near us. Some of their parents migrated from a southern state where their family couldn't vote, ride in the front of city buses, own property in certain areas, take a leak in certain bathrooms, drink from certain bathrooms, go to decent schools etc. In 1963. Which I guess must be ancient history to all the 18 year olds here who were not alive yet when Pulp Fiction was in movie theaters...

Silicon Valley is full of people born on third base thinking they hit a triple. Look at YC founder Robert Morris. He wrote a virus and crashed the Internet, did zero jail time, then went to an Ivy League school, started a company and sold it for millions. Now he's pointed to in HN circles as an example - some smart, hard-working guy who had the personality to hack the system and win. But the guys I knew who hacked into systems with much less damage at the exact same time went to real federal prisons. The spark in their eye was seen as a threat to the system, they should be "made an example of" as the judge said. They were just "spics, niggers and white trash" as a security consultant said at the time. Not a Brahmin WASP whose father had high connections in the government and intelligence establishment. My point is that I learned these lessons of how the world works long ago. People can go on for a long time oblivious, decades, but at some point in time, the real world comes crashing into the palaces of the Louis the Sixteenths and Czar Nicholas's of the world...or the Pentagons...

Of course none of this happened, the system is fair, everyone is born on a level playing field in this American system of Horatio Alger stories where anyone with gumption and a work ethic can be rich...

altero10• 13 years ago

Computer is for 'elite' is getting old. I learned programming on XT for $20, my current laptop is worth $120. Cheap programmable calculators are available over 35 years.

hi-there3• 13 years ago

Too many ... for me to understand what you mean.

If Robert Morris was jailed for life, would it make the world a better place?

People in the developed countries wont crash anywhere any day soon. Modern bread and circus - junk food, celebrities, TV shows and professional sports will take care of that.

hi-there3• 13 years ago

10 000 hours with a manual and 10 000 hours in a very smart company sharing your interests lead to drastically different results.

nadam• 13 years ago

"The ultimate point of Masters of Doom is that today you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve success, and John Carmack himself will be the first to tell you that. Where John was sitting in a cubicle by himself in Mesquite, Texas for 80 hours a week painstakingly inventing all this stuff from first principles, on hardware that was barely capable, you have a supercomputer in your pocket, another supercomputer on your desk, and two dozen open source frameworks and libraries that can do 90% of the work for you. You have GitHub, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and the whole of the Internet."

Which is bad news if your strength is that you are a good programmer, because in this kind of environment games become a commodity, so you have to compete with hundreds of thousands of other game developers who also don't have to be as briliant as Carmack. See the app market; it has a winner take all characteristic, so even if you don't have to be as brilliant as Carmack in programming, you have to be very strong in something or lucky to achieve success.

As I remember Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky took venture capital to take off stack overflow. (And also they had a huge following even before starting that venture.)

I kind of don't really buy these kind of 'motivational' posts. Achieving success is always possible but always hard.

gizmo4• 13 years ago

Every generation faces different challenges, but the value of the internet cannot be understated. It's a resource that answers any question you may have about programming, about PC internals, or about the business and marketing parts you have to get right. You can easily reach out to hundreds or thousands of people who have already accomplished what you're trying to do and who blog earnestly about their experiences. You can test whether a game or app has merit with a fraction of the effort required in the 90s. And now you have millions of hours worth of open source code to build on top on.

"If you build it they will come" doesn't quite work on the internet. Except maybe if your product is extraordinary. But before the internet, when it's just you in your parents' basement? Then you need a real marketing channel otherwise you stand no chance. Even the Id guys had to write shareware games for an established distributor before they figured out how to do the shareware thing.

Today you can bootstrap a business worth millions based on a $8 a month VPS. As far as I can tell this hasn't been true in any other part of history or in any other field. There is still so much low-hanging fruit in software - it's crazy.

sanderjd• 13 years ago

Everything you say is absolutely right, but your parent's point still stands: everybody has all those same advantages, which means that the bar for both ordinary and extraordinary is much higher. DOOM would be ordinary (even sub-ordinary) if it were released now, precisely because you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to make it.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

"but the value of the internet cannot be understated. It's a resource that answers any question you may have about programming, about PC internals, or about the business and marketing parts you have to get right."

This

It was not difficult to program in the 80s, 90s. But to get the information you needed, oh wow, that was tough.

In the US it was certainly easier, but unfortunately it's not as easy in some other countries. And yes, there were magazines, etc. Still, some information were very hard to find.

throwaway1979• 13 years ago

The Internet brought value but also competition. Frankly, we live in the age of hyper competition, and I don't see us ever going back.

There is saying, if you can make it in NY, you can make it anywhere. That quip is related to competition, and in my opinion anywhere is becoming just like NY.

petercooper2• 13 years ago

I came here to say almost exactly the same thing, that is, doing impressive looking things nowadays is so relatively easy that doing something that genuinely stands out is as hard as ever.

Back in the day, it was more a problem of resources than ability or ideas, because hardware was expensive, open source was less prevalent, etc, but now almost everyone has the resources so now you need to be creatively and mentally on top of your game to compete instead. Being persuasive and able to get your work seen is also more important than ever. Lots of great work gets produced that never breaks out.

All that said, when things become more about talent than resources, it reduces the privilege needed to make an impact, so it certainly has its plus points.

speeder3• 13 years ago

More or less...

Unless you make some sort of lucky viral, now what you need is massive resources for marketing... as I continue with my startup this become more and more obvious, there is no decent success in the game industry without massive marketing, from AAA (Activision expends on its main games around 250 million in marketing budget only), to Indie (many small successful indie games had big marketing budgets, or had others with those budgets doing the marketing for them, successful indies either are close friends of other successful ones or are rich or are close to the media industry, for example was journalist or worked for CMP Media)

robmcm2• 13 years ago

The thing to remember is that everyone has these advantages, so really they aren't advantages.

All they have done is raise the standards, you can't just knock out something of the W3D standard and make millions, these days people expect quality that cost upwards of 100M to make a top hit.

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

All they have done is raise the standards

Disagree. What they have done is reduced the amount of effort that needs to be invested in the technical aspect, thus increasing the amount of time that can be invested in the creative aspect. In other words, they have changed the field on which contenders compete.

mseebach• 13 years ago

What has changed isn't the opportunities of good programmer - they can still have very solid careers. I am not convinced that a developer could successfully build a game as good as Quake just on the strength of being a good programmer. He would also need to be a good game designer.

What has changed is the opportunities of good game designers, and tons of other fields that can much easier leverage the awesome power of computing to achieve success.

EDIT:

As I remember Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky took venture capital to take off stack overflow. (And also they had a huge following even before starting that venture.)

I don't think his point was that StackOverflow was an example of something that was easy to build, I think he meant is as a example of a resource that didn't exist when Carmack wrote DOOM.

avenger123• 13 years ago

I would not say that games become a commodity because anyone can make them now.

You still need to make a game that is playable, has replay value, engages the person and is fun to play. That is no easy task at all.

Some have the gift for it and for those this is an incredible opportunity. I look at Temple Run and Ting Wings on iOS. Two games that stand out for their uniqueness and that were developed by 1 or 2 people.

No one is getting anywhere making another Tetris clone or a match 3 game unless there is really unique twist to the game.

At the end of the day, the tools are much much better but you still need that gift to know what will click with people.

_random_4• 13 years ago

This. There is only one Limbo, Gish, Fez, Galcon, Voxatron etc.

toadi• 13 years ago

I think for games the challenge is not in the technology anymore. But in the gameplay and making a game that's compelling.

I used to play games on a commodore which only showed pixels. I remember playing pirates and feeling like a real pirate.

At least people who can make compelling games and stories are not hindered any more if they're not a genius programmer.

hi-there3• 13 years ago

IMHO there's another factor at play. Back in the Commodore days very low percentage of population had computers, and the average computer user IQ was very high. So back then games were targeting a smarter user, hence a better gameplay.

cerebrum• 13 years ago

I like the way someone put it: "Is it easy to achieve success with an app(website, game, whatever)? Yes! Is it probable? No!"

jmcgough• 13 years ago

I strongly recommend the book to anyone who's at all curious in game history, Carmack, or game development. I read it as a teenager, and it really inspired me to become a programmer.

acoleman616• 13 years ago

As others have mentioned in the past, I believe this is one of the best "business" books I've ever read. Not in the traditional sense, but that only furthers my point. Absolutely phenomenal read.

danmaz742• 13 years ago

Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.”

Wow, my admiration for Carmack just increased tenfold.

dabeeeenster• 13 years ago

He comes out of that book very well. Hard but fair. Romero, on the other hand...

jrs992• 13 years ago

...made you his bitch.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

What's he like?

ritchiea• 13 years ago

I understand what you're getting at, but how exactly does the book make Romero look bad? Sure he certainly made more mistakes than Carmack, but does that make him look bad? At worst the book makes Romero look a little arrogant. But the book is also filled with accounts of Romero doing great work and notes that when the two Johns met it was Carmack that admired Romero for having more impressive programming knowledge. Clearly things changed but implying that the book makes Romero look bad is a stretch.

NovemberWest2• 13 years ago

There is a lot of learning by asking questions, which works well guy to guy but there are serious barriers if you are female. I have repeatedly run into the fact that most men either do not want to talk to me at all or, if they do, it is usually in hopes of getting into my pants. Neither scenario leads to professional development. They are both equally poisonous, just in different ways. It is rare for me to run into a man who will converse with me at length about something other than whether or not I might sleep with him, in essence. That is a huge barrier to networking and professional development.

ctdonath• 13 years ago

Ummm...posted to wrong [sub]thread?

3327• 13 years ago

The arrow of time with respect to computers splits into two two distinctions: BC ( before Carmack): circa 1993

and AC (after Carmack).

It is a simply game but it changed the course of history in terms of what direction gaming went, thus the heavy hardware designs to support that type of games.

angersock2• 13 years ago

Quake was basically the only reason to get a 486DX--floating point support.

The crazy GPU push--later culminating in CUDA and all that other nonsense--is completely due to the Quake OpenGL and 3dfx support.

High-speed internet at home was mostly useful for playing on QuakeWorld, and later derivatives Half-Life, and the Unreal series (not a derivative, but you get the idea).

So, yeah.

EDIT:

One might also point out that the death of the great workstation companies (SGI, HP, etc.) happened because they were no longer competitive in the CAD space, specifically because consumer-level graphics cards were improving driven by the demands of gaming.

theorique4• 13 years ago

Amazing quote:

"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."

So inspirational.

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

They don't make programmers like Carmack any more. When he was around, Carmack and his comrades were making the rules and paving new paths doing things that were considered impossible. These days, finding the answers is all too easy thanks to Stack Overflow and Github. I also feel as though the limits of computing in a gaming sense like Quake and Doom were will never happen ever again.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

If you haven't read this book, go get it. It's the ultimate start-up story.

They start out as the most rag-tag group of developers. They took their computers home on the weekends from their day jobs at SoftDisk to work on their own games. These weren't MacBook Airs, they were full-tower 386 desktops with CRT monitors!

They packed into an apartment for their first 'real' offices. The story about them re-creating Super Mario pixel by pixel using a VHS recorder and TV is great.

Then these guys spent a small fortune on NeXT workstations to create Doom/Quake! Who doesn't dream about using the most high-end tools you can get your hands on.

And in the end, they all end up as famous 'rock star' millionaires driving Ferraris.

angersock2• 13 years ago

It's a much more down-to-earth story about some good Texas boys kicking ass than you'll find with the people scrambling over themselves on the coasts to catch as much as they can from VCs making it rain.

sreyaNotfilc• 13 years ago

Lol, How many times does one (me in particular) need to read inspirational stories about hard work, dedication, pizza, and soda pop to actually do something about it?

Small anecdote: I was working on software for my site yesterday and thought about Carmack and the Fez guy (Phil Fish) and how they did amazing things on a computer. And then I thought about how tough it was for me to build a software for the web. Yes, its some complex software, but we have more tools now than those before us. There's really no excuse to not get things done (if you really want it done).

What I need to realize is that these guys didn't just think their way to success. They built their way to success. They had the idea, and then executed. You have to be moving and building. No one can see inside your mind. So, to show how amazing your idea really is, you'd need to literally "show" them the idea.

So yes, hopefully this is my last awe inspiring story. Hopefully (not hopefully, it will be...) the next time I chime in, I'll have something to show instead of an idea baking in my head.

In the words of Jobs "Real artists ship"! And I feel like I'm there.

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

Lol, How many times does one (me in particular) need to read inspirational stories about hard work, dedication, pizza, and soda pop to actually do something about it?

If you want a good source of motivation, you might try getting a horrible job for a while.

Really. I did door to door sales when I was a girl. Hours upon hours of walking around seeing people who want nothing more in their heart of hearts than for you to fuck off and die. Nothing motivated me more to put in the hours at uni - even though I didn't like what I was studying - than the prospect of going back to that soul-crushing job, nothing's motivated me more to put in the hours at things that don't really please me than that either.

These days, when people tell me that something's hard, or that they have a shit job, I really have to step on my tongue to stop myself turning around and going - You don't know what a horrible job is, not really. You've been on easy street all your life.

FLUX-YOU• 13 years ago

I have to second this. I made the best progress learning and building when I was stocking shelves at Target for $8 an hour in a rich neighborhood. I've experienced many of these sentiments.

Unfortunately, I took this position after graduating.

onedev• 13 years ago

What does being a girl have to do with sales?

bluedino2• 13 years ago

Carmack wasn't the only one behind ID (and therefore his own) success. Sure, he was the technical genius behind the game engines but he also was working with incredibly talented level designers, artists, and gameplay tweakers. Even other programmers like the legendary Michael Abrash. 'Hire the best...'

The other big part of their success was the direct marketing. Even if Doom was as successful as it was, they'd have made only 1/4 of the money if they used a traditional publisher.

agumonkey• 13 years ago

Abrash books are very funny, they look like the thing you won't read in less than 2 weeks, and 48 hours later you're sweaty for not stopping reading. What a joy.

billmalarky5• 13 years ago

Carmack wasn't solely responsible for ID's success, but if the book is to be believed he's about 80%-90% the reason for ID's success.

danso• 13 years ago

Carmack and Woz would've made a great engineering team...amazing that such brilliant engineers were also so generous

MikeTLive• 13 years ago

Would Have? ... The future is not over yet.

jimbokun• 13 years ago

Working with Jobs was probably better for Woz than working with Carmack ever could have been.

Jobs had a sense of how what Woz's talent could change the world. Woz may have enjoyed showing off his projects to Carmack, but I doubt Carmack could have gotten to leave his job at HP.

dagw2• 13 years ago

Carmack and Woz, without Romereo and Jobs to truly see the potential of their work, would probably still be sitting deep in the R&D department of some large engineering company.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Excellent post. I've heard of the book before but never read it - although I did just order a copy.

I liked Carmack's comments on patents. Interesting that all these years later is still such a big issue in the software industry.

It was also very interesting to see the comparison between shareware and in-app purchases. Never thought of that before.

nachteilig• 13 years ago

Carmack still hasn't managed to let me down after all of these years, and I've probably tried to keep up with his happenings since the Quake days.

He's a real inspiration. If you haven't read this book already, it's really worth it.

wildermuthn• 13 years ago

Carmack's story continues at Oculus. He might be famous among the gaming world (might not), but it won't be long until he's famous throughout the world. VR's coming.

varelse2• 13 years ago

As much as I admire John Carmack's bootstrapped success (and on this axis the guy is just awesome), given how he handled the poor health of his cat, I don't think I'd ever work with or for him. It just doesn't sit right with me.

_random_4• 13 years ago

You would've been fine! As long as you don't pee around the office.

varelse2• 13 years ago

Here's what really puzzles me. John Carmack was a legend by the time of the Mitzi incident. Instead of dumping the poor creature at the animal shelter like he did, he could have auctioned off "John Carmack's frickin' cat" to his legion of admirers, giving it a new home.

Or he could have taken it to a vet and probably found out it had bladder stones which could have been removed by a ~$1,000 procedure, but I digress.

And that I think is part of why I'm not rich like he is...

jokoon• 13 years ago

And here I am, with good ideas about making a persistent online single infinite world, all the tools, but not actually working on it daily.

The weird thing, is that many other companies have the actual skills to do what I want to do, but they don't.

Clearly my project is either stupid or I'm very lazy, or nobody is innovating and that's what kill the market.

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

Yes you do, unless you intend to rent forever.

everyone• 13 years ago

"You know how game companies spent the last 5 years figuring out that free games with 100% in-app purchases are the optimum (and maybe, only) business model for games today? "

What!!??

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Shareware seems more like Kickstarter to me, in terms of sentiment. You get niche, hobbyist communities excited about your product, and pool up money through grassroots efforts. Though perhaps shareware's most direct descendent today is when creators release albums or ebooks and add a tip jar for suggested donations.

drakaal2• 13 years ago

You do need millions of dollars. Building a Game today is not what it was when Wolf 3d was made. The number of textures the depth of the story, the voice acting, the quality of physics that players expect to day is very different.

You can't write a Portal, or a Half Life, or a Quake, or a Halo, in you spare time between classes at school, or even by yourself living in your mom's basement over a year. The speed at which game tech advances is such that a one to 5 man shop can't create a game worth million in the time it takes to be obsolete.

Yes, there will be exceptions like Angry Birds. But most people aren't going to be that company that just nails game play at the right time. And most those won't be as much developers as designers.

fsckin• 13 years ago

Portal, or a Half Life, or a Quake, or a Halo

Portal might not be a good example to use here. It's essentially version 1.0 of Narbacular Drop, which was made by a small team of students at DigiPen. Valve picked up the team and the retail version of the game never had more than 10 people working on it at a time.

drakaal2• 13 years ago

10 people for a year is $1m.

And they used digital Assets from Valve, and a lot of voice work and music work that they had to buy.

100983• 13 years ago

today you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve success

That is a lie. To achieve anything similar to what Quake and Doom were at their time, one must possess raw undiluted talent and no amount of tools, libraries or online resources are going to help.

If it was that easy, we'd see masterpieces pop up every few months. But instead the market is flooded with mediocrity. Which really should come as no surprise, because we know that 90% of everything is crap. That includes people: most people (including myself), unfortunately, aren't half as smart and talented as they think they are. Which is why we struggle to create things that could be considered merely "good", and "great" is completely outside of our reach.

altero10• 13 years ago

BS. You do not need "raw undiluted talent" to create stuff like Instagram. Most successful games today are light years behind 20 years old counterparts.

100983• 13 years ago

Please read my comment more carefully.

To achieve anything similar to what Quake and Doom were at their time...

Most of the games are by no means as important as Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake were when they first came out. id software laid the foundation for the modern FPS genre and defined the way the industry evolved for years to come.

Instagram is just a dumbed-down flickr with a mobile app.

manuelflara• 13 years ago

It says "to achieve success" (think Candy Crush et al), not "to create a masterpiece".

100983• 13 years ago

In that case his point is moot. Of course you don't need to be as bright as Carmack to achieve some definition of success. You can be a furniture salesman and achieve success that way. But it's like saying that water is wet.

His argument only makes sense if he implies that you don't need to be as smart to repeat id software's success these days, which I think is incorrect.

Sam121• 13 years ago

One of the best game i ever play in my childhood and complete it with in 3 days, still remember the stage 3 when i have to touch space bar for open the gate and simultaneous monster came. it was scary for me. Mainly i like to target the oil drums :). Mine favorite weapon was the machine gun which was available in the middle chamber with a protected suit

perlpimp• 13 years ago

Just to the point, I am located in Russia where print copy of this book would appear in 6months to year if at all. Technology allowed me purchase this book and read it right away.

It is all about focus and determination nowadays, just like it always was. And way back it took some real patience and a highly structured approach to achieve any kind of success. And now you can the cake and eat it too - compared to effort you needed to expend in nineties to create something. Information wasn't just everywhere, tracing compiler bugs could make you go down one or other rabbit hole for days if not week or two.

You don't need millions of dollars

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