I've gotten to know John a little bit, and I have to say it's a strange feeling to have a conversation with a person of his off-the-charts intelligence. I consider myself to be pretty smart-- was known as "the math whiz" in high school, went to top engineering universities and did very well there, have a couple of (minor) entrepreneurial accomplishments, etc. And yet talking to Carmack I feel like I'm talking to someone who is a full two standard deviations beyond me in raw intelligence horsepower. It's a pretty sobering and humbling experience.
Part of it is that he really does spend 8+ hours per day coding, every weekday, and has done so for 20 years. You'd think his experience level there is about as high as you can get, so it's always cool to hear him talk about the new things he's still learning at his work. I have to wonder if there's anyone else in the world that has both his raw ability and all those man-years of programming experience. It seems like most successful technical people end up doing management and business.
There's a couple of things people probably don't know about Carmack. For one, he can talk intelligently on a lot of different topics. A lot of nitty-gritty aerospace engineering, as well as the history of the space program and NASA for example. He's also up to speed on the latest across a wide range of technology, including things like cleantech.
Second, he has a pretty good sense of humor and can be quite funny. Which is surprising I think just because he spends so little time (effectively zero) out being traditionally social, which you'd think would be necessary to getting good at making people laugh. But in conversation he has a pretty sense of comedy and timing.
An example from his twitter feed that I clipped a while back:
Part of it is that he really does spend 8+ hours per day coding, every weekday, and has done so for 20 years. You'd think his experience level there is about as high as you can get, so it's always cool to hear him talk about the new things he's still learning at his work. I have to wonder if there's anyone else in the world that has both his raw ability and all those man-years of programming experience. It seems like most successful technical people end up doing management and business.
There's a couple of things people probably don't know about Carmack. For one, he can talk intelligently on a lot of different topics. A lot of nitty-gritty aerospace engineering, as well as the history of the space program and NASA for example. He's also up to speed on the latest across a wide range of technology, including things like cleantech.
Second, he has a pretty good sense of humor and can be quite funny. Which is surprising I think just because he spends so little time (effectively zero) out being traditionally social, which you'd think would be necessary to getting good at making people laugh. But in conversation he has a pretty sense of comedy and timing.
An example from his twitter feed that I clipped a while back:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/167739644853747712 "Adding film grain, chromatic aberration, and rendering at 24 hz for film look is like putting horse shit in a car for the buggy experience."