QuakeCon 2012 - John Carmack Keynote

What people said

hotwire · 2018-04 · Strong recommendation

John Carmack is an absolutely brilliant speaker. Conversational, captivating and effortlessly natural. I could listen to him talk all day about the most arcane bits of graphics development which i'll never understand but am fascinated by regardless. His QuakeCon talks are particularly good. QuakeCon 2011 - [LINK] QuakeCon 2012 - [VIDEO] I like his talks because he's always interested by what he's doing and it tends to make me interested again in code. Linus Torvalds is another surprisingly good speaker. His talk on git - one of the dryest possible topics - was very interesting. There's not many other people I'd sit and listen to talk about SCM. [LINK]

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SonOfLilit · 2016-10 · Strong recommendation

"The Birth and Death of Javascript" by Gary Bernhardt (probably the most talented speaker on tech) at [LINK] I'd mention Bret Victor's work before (maybe Drawing Dynamic Visualizations?), but Bret cheats by writing a lot of amazing code for each of his talks, and most of the awesome comes from the code, not his (great nonetheless) ability as a speaker. Then you have John Carmack's QuakeCon keynotes, which are just hours and hours of him talking about things that interest him in random order, and it still beats most well prepared talks because of how good he is at what he does. HN will probably like best the one where he talks about his experiments in VR, a bit before he joined Oculus (stuff like when he tried shining a laser into his eyes to project an image, against the recommendations of... well, everyone): [VIDEO]

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erikbye · 2017-02 · Recommendation

Carmack has programmed professionally at least since 1990, he was 19 then, 20 when he founded id Software. Genius or not, he obviously has a lot of programming experience, and familiarity with a subject counts for a lot. He has worked really hard, written millions of LoC. Obviously his "genius" lies not in learning a programming language and syntax, anyone can do that. But he evidently has a knack for developing new techniques (e.g. in graphics). He has a good understanding of especially light physics and hence physical based rendering. Considering his ventures with Armadillo Aerospace it's probably safe to say he's got a good understanding of physics in general. How many game developers went from games to aerospace? [LINK] [LINK] Elon Musk practically offered Carmack a job at SpaceX, tweeting "Well, if you love rockets, come work on them with me at SpaceX!" Carmack is a very enthusiastic person, who is hard working, and genuinely passionate about everything he pursues. I have "followed" him for a good while. It's not difficult to tell he's a lot smarter than your average Joe, but he also seems quite a bit sharper than your average smart programmer. I recommend watching all his talks and interviews. Some amusing and revealing stuff on his childhood: [LINK] "In the gaming industry, there are a lot of people that are specifically in it because they love games and they want to create things. My love for programming is a more abstract thing. I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment w

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