John Carmack Quotes

I really think, if anything, there is more evidence to show that the violent games reduce aggression and violence. There have actually been some studies about that, that it’s cathartic. If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you’re probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention. I think it’s at worst neutral and potentially positive.

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.

If you’re willing to restrict the flexibility of your approach, you can almost always do something better

We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version.

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

It is not that uncommon for the cost of an abstraction to outweigh the benefit it delivers. Kill one today!

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

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.

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.

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.

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 situation is so much better for programmers today – a cheap used PC, a linux CD, and an internet account, and you have all the tools necessary to work your way to any level of programming skill you want to shoot for.