alt Hacker NewsI was nodding my head agreeing with you but then remembered John Carmack, who seems to deliver both... He takes great pride in writing ground breaking code, for industry defining products.
We should all try and be more like John Carmack.
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I admire the guy but he spends like 12 hours a day doing just that and his code is full of tricks, it's debatable as a paragon of quality. I don't think it's for everyone, to be Carmack, nor it should be; diversity is important.
I argue we shouldn't, because if everyone is like Carmack then no one is.
And only people on the older end of the spectrum have seen Carmack working in his element back in the day.
The things I want people to take from a guy like John Carmack, or Jon Blow, or Lukas Pope, or Ron Gilbert, or Tim Schafer, or Warren Spector, or Sam Lake, or David Cage god forbid...is pure curiosity and pushing the boundaries to make that real.
In every case there is a mix of a deep and unusual urge to make an idea happen with an affinity towards the technicality of it.
I bring Sam Lake into this because nobody has blended FMV with gameplay the way Remedy have and pushed the boundary on it.
Another detail is that his groundbreaking code was great part of made some of the products - I'm thinking of Doom.
It wasn't just for the sake of quality and best practices, it defined and had an impact on the product experience.
Like Doom probably wouldn't have been as successful if it was any other way.
The man is on a different level, cognitively speaking. That's like asking sprinters to "just be more like Usain Bolt". Some people are just built different. Carmack is one of them.