skulblaka

This. Every single company which has done an IPO and sold shares has sold any chance they had of being respectable. Without exception. They might remain profitable, in the short term, but they have permanently rescinded all possibility of respect or virtue, and in most cases already signed the death certificate for their company. It is impossible for a publicly traded company to do the right thing. It is sometimes possible for a private company to do the right thing, and that is only possible because of the lack of fiduciary duty to shareholders. Once you have shareholders calling your shots, you’ve sold yourself to the worst kind of devil and you’re legally required to maximize the return on those shareholders investments, meaning that honest and virtuous business dealings are immediately out the window permanently. “Money now at all costs, NOW NOW NOW” becomes the sole focus of the business and every single other consideration is banished in favor of it.

Many businesses don’t actually survive this. I wish it killed more of them.

I went to one of those, around 2010ish. I have many, many consecutive hours of bitching that I could do about it, but suffice to say it’s exactly as bad as you’d expect.

I made some really good friends there, though, some of which I’m still in touch with. Out of the five of us who hung out together, I think one of us graduated.

Personally, after I dropped out, I tried to transfer the nearly half a degree worth of credits that I had completed, only to find out that not a single one of those transfers to any other school due to some difference in the school’s accreditation, which we only learned about after I left it. Very pleased to learn that, I walked out of that school with $30k in student loan debt and literally nothing whatsoever to show for it.

This kind of shit is how arson happens, don’t fall for it.

The bones of some of his lighting algorithms are still in use to this day. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he is an exceptional programmer.

The best of his generation is harder to assert just because that generation had a pretty large handful of names who each truly revolutionized computing. But I do believe that without Carmack then Doom never happens, idtech never happens, the resulting 90’s-2000’s FPS craze never happens. Without Doom landing on the hardware of every nerd on the planet it’s very likely the middle age of the video game industry went in a very different direction.

I’d say he earned that ego, even if I wouldn’t like dealing with it in a professional environment. But I think it’s a reasonable thing to say that a good 75% of the next decade of game dev was primarily borne up by Carmack’s bootstraps.