John Carmack

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. Show less «

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. Show less «