Top 34 John Carmack Quotes

#1. 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

John Carmack Quotes #78872
#2. 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

John Carmack Quotes #112539
#3. It is not that uncommon for the cost of an abstraction to outweigh the benefit it delivers. Kill one today!

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #232559
#4. It's a good thing Doom 3 is selling very well ...

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #233582
#5. I've said before that I'm a remarkably unsentimental person.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #249155
#6. An interesting question: is it easier to motivate a learned individual that never does anything, or educate an ignorant individual that actually produces things?

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #256151
#7. The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #265661
#8. 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

John Carmack Quotes #359540
#9. If you're willing to restrict the flexibility of your approach, you can almost always do something better

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #395023
#10. You can prematurely optimize maintainability, flexibility, security, and robustness just like you can performance.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #500738
#11. 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

John Carmack Quotes #554909
#12. One of the big lessons of a big project is you don't want people that aren't really programmers programming, you'll suffer for it!

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #562556
#13. Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #715044
#14. The speed of light sucks.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #879993
#15. 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.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #901694
#16. Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #949901
#17. Making one brilliant decision and a whole bunch of mediocre ones isn't as good as making a whole bunch of generally smart decisions throughout the whole process.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1027475
#18. 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

John Carmack Quotes #1030317
#19. I'd rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1041739
#20. 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

John Carmack Quotes #1062151
#21. It's nice to have a game that sells a million copies.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1081514
#22. 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.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1178902
#23. I wanted to remain a technical adviser for Id, but it just didn't work out. Probably for the best, as the divided focus was challenging.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1185258
#24. 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

John Carmack Quotes #1293003
#25. It is difficult to make good scalable use of a CPU like you can of a graphics card. You certainly don't want 'better or worse' physics or AI in your game

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1299629
#26. 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

John Carmack Quotes #1330760
#27. Note to self: Pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1353179
#28. 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.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1417518
#29. 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.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1427706
#30. Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1434194
#31. I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1442405
#32. I recognize that I possess a very special intellect, but at the same time, I recognize that I'm lacking in a lot of areas. But being well-rounded is greatly overrated.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1494138
#33. 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

John Carmack Quotes #1609120
#34. Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

John Carmack

John Carmack Quotes #1681445

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