Steal From The Best

Steal From The Best

John Carmack

Legendary game programmer

Ideas

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why 48ms of latency is ridiculous

0:46

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains how cheap prototypes accelerate experimentation

1:01

Legendary game programmer John Carmack: “What if we just didn’t have any landing gear at all?”

0:49

Legendary game programmer John Carmack on why codebases need automated tools and guardrails

1:50

Game programmer John Carmack explains why he no longer says "it'll be done when it's done"

1:49

John Carmack explains why overclocked gaming PCs beat supercomputers for serial tasks

0:48

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why debuggers are powerful

1:40

Legendary game programmer John Carmack on why he likes static array size declarations

1:35

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why infinite detail isn’t important

1:40

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why he’s never felt burnout

0:59

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why 20 milliseconds is the magic number for VR

1:24

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains how he measures controller-to-screen latency

1:05

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains how time warp works

1:47

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why most software engineering isn't science

1:25

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why game materials must make physical sense

1:57

Game programmer John Carmack explains why he worries about GPU drivers, not hardware

0:53

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why working longer and harder gets more done

3:41

Legendary game programmer John Carmack on the math you actually need

1:53

Legendary programmer John Carmack explains why he would've split Doom's innovations into two games

0:45

John Carmack explains why he doesn't use photon mapping

3:24

Legendary game programmer John Carmack explains why he moved his daily walk earlier

0:48

Intro

▶️From DOOM to Quake: The John Carmack Story18:53 · 17 Sep 2026

▶️Doom origin story | John Carmack and Lex Fridman14:43 · 6 Aug 2022

📄John Carmack - Wikipedia

Deep

🎧John Carmack: Doom, Quake, VR, AGI, Programming, Video Games, and Rockets | Lex Fridman Podcast #3095:14:50 · 4 Aug 2022

▶️John Carmack Keynote - QuakeCon 20132:49:18 · 4 Aug 2013

▶️QuakeCon 2012 - John Carmack Keynote3:36:38 · 4 Aug 2012

📄John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering8 min read · 13 May 2017

📕Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Cultureover 250 pages · 11 May 2004

📕Game Engine Black Book: DOOMover 250 pages · 10 Dec 2018

📕Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3Dover 250 pages · 6 Dec 2018

Other inventors

Douglas EngelbartInventor of the computer mouse and interactive computing pioneer

Alan KayComputer scientist who developed Smalltalk

Tim Berners-LeeInventor of the World Wide Web

Richard FeynmanNobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist

David Heinemeier HanssonCreator of Ruby on Rails and CTO of 37Signals

Mitchell HashimotoCo-founder of HashiCorp and creator of Ghostty

Peter SteinbergerCreator of OpenClaw

Paul BuchheitCreator of Gmail