Masters of Doom is a great book going in length about the personalities and talents of Carmack and others from the early days of id Software. If you're genuinely curious about it, I think you'll find the book a fascinating read.
"Stay Awhile and Listen" is a great book covering the founding story of Blizzard North, creators of Diablo 1 & 2. While not as great as Masters of Doom, it reminded me quite a bit of it.
Read the book “Masters of Doom” for more detail than this article. Great book on the rise and fall of id software.
"Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture" has an excellent account of how Romero and Carmack built these games.
In my opinion, Masters of Doom (as an audiobook) went from good to exceptional because of Will Weaton's narration.
Here's a book more people should know about:
Masters of Doom.
Awesome read.
DOOM was before my time, but I really enjoyed Masters of Doom which is the story of id up to right before DOOM III. Wil Wheaton did a fantastic job with the audiobook.
If you don't believe it, read Masters of Doom - it's a hugely sympathetic history of id and they still manage to look like sociopaths in it, especially Carmack. They steal, lie and backstab their friends.
I have. Works great for (unabridged) audiobooks paired with their original texts. I even put on the Quake and Deus Ex soundtracks while listening to the audiobook of Masters of Doom while reading the paperback.
Masters of Doom by David Kushner (despite him being a journo) is pretty good.
Masters of Doom. Great book about John Carmack and id software.
I'm just reading Masters of Doom right now. It's absolutely fantastic!
Masters of Doom is a great book. It's an easy and enjoyable read.
Besides what everyone else has already mentioned, I find great computer science presentations and story/interview based computer science-ish books to be great motivators.
Book examples: In the Plex, Masters of Doom, Steve Jobs, Founders at Work, Coders at Work
Cool guy who influenced entertainment and technology greatly. Everyone should read Masters of Doom.
I would say Masters of Doom is one of the best startup related books anywhere. A team of incredibly passionate people that just wanted to make awesome shit and focused on that. Very inspiring.
It is funny that you mention this book. I've read Masters of Doom and just received this one. I'm excited to read it.
I own and have read the book Masters of Doom 4 times. I'm getting the urge to read that puppy again...
That's probably the case. The author of the article is David Kushner, writer of "Masters of Doom", so he probably knows Romero pretty well.
That's a bit simplified. More details about this story can be found in the very entertaining book "Masters of Doom" (about John Carmack and John Romero).
Masters of Doom is a great read... or listen
I can't wait for part 2. I wish there was a book written about the early days of Blizzard or Westwood Studios and those kind of great companies, kind of like the book Masters of Doom about id Software, or Revolution in the Valley about Apple.
This is great! I just finished reading Masters of Doom so this could not have come at a better time.
This would be a good time to remind everyone to read the book Masters of Doom. Such a great story of how these games came to be.
But it’s still an important example, because a union would not have allowed John Carmack to exist, and we would have none of his fruits. If you read Masters of Doom, it will be obvious why.
If you've not read Masters of Doom, do so now. It is an amazing read.
For anyone who finds this interesting, I strongly recommend "Masters of Doom" by David Kushner, which focuses on the history of iD software, John Carmack and John Romero.
Oh yeah, sorry, I meant Hackers. The Masters of Doom audiobook was really good!
Absolutely. Masters of Doom was a compelling read. And reread.
I recommend Masters of Doom to everyone. It's wonderful, historical, nostalgic and inspiring.
Respect. DOOM nostalgia runs deep. And if anyone hasn't read Masters of Doom it is certainly of the most powerful origin stories imaginable ;)
This reminds me, I've recently read the book Masters of Doom, which is mostly about the two Johns (Romero and Carmack) and it was excellent. I'm sure most people here would also like it.
I highly recommend the book Masters of Doom. Great writing and such a great story.
If you enjoyed reading this and want to learn more about Carmack, Doom and id software, Masters of Doom by David Kushner is a well researched and enjoyable read.
I just finished reading David Kushner's Masters of Doom, which tells the story of DOOM development, as well as the id software story around it. It was well-written and thoroughly researched story, should be a good read for many in here.
David Kushner's ''Masters of Doom'' about John Carmack, John Romero, id Software, Scott Miller and Apogee and the game industry in the 1990s. Well written and, as far as I'm concerned, fascinating part of the hacker culture and history.
Carmack is such a boss. If your interest is piqued every time you hear about him, make sure to read
Masters of Doom:
http://amzn.com/0812972155
I have to name two in a tie: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and Masters of Doom by David Kushner. Both Jobs and John Carmack have been huge sources of inspiration since I've read these books, and in very different ways. And that effect has lasted long since I finished the books, which is rare.
Seconding this recommendation, great book.
The Cuckoo’s Egg is not quite similar to Masters of Doom, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, or Hackers, but it’s an extremely good book about tracking hackers and Berkeley Unix (BSD). It’s motivating in a similar way though :)
Masters of Doom is an absolutely brilliant book that rekindled my interest in game development. I'd heard of Carmack before reading it, but this news is so much more impactful knowing just how integral he was to making gaming what it is today.
The book Masters of Doom is a good read if you're interested in the backstory here.
Probably mentioned elsewhere, but Masters of Doom is a great book that reads a bit better (for me personally) than an interview like this article.
Loved Masters of Doom. I reread that one every once in a while as sort of reminder. It's an easy enough read that rereading it is fun.
Not sure where it would rank for you on tech-related, but I enjoyed Masters of Doom by David Kushner (read by Wil Wheaton). Great deep dive on how id Software came to be and how the two Johns and the two Carmacks came together.
Only slightly related but I read "masters of doom" recently and I can't recommend it highly enough. It is a very entertaining read even if you are not crazy over video games. It tells the story of the two Johns, and mention Commander Keen among other things. Great read
Carmack definitely has a place in my mind as one of the greatest hackers ever. I was kind of bummed that he did not respond to the interview request for the "Coders at Work" book. However, the "Masters of Doom" book offered a fun insight into his early hacking adventures!
I highly recommend the book "Masters of Doom" (Amazon), an in-depth look at id Software from the modest beginnings until Quake III. A must for any geek!
Here is your daily reminder to read "
Masters of Doom", a book about the early days at ID Software. It's an amazing look into a really cool time in gaming and software as a whole.
It's a great book, mostly about John Carmack and the guys at ID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom
Because of screen glare, maybe? In Masters of Doom, the author describes how Romero created his perfect office environment with lots of natural light. The employees then stapled dark felt over the top of their cubicles because the screen glare was so bad.
The book "Masters of Doom" tells more about it. And of course the story of id software, Doom, Quake, Carmack and Romero.
Masters of Doom is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. I don't think there's really a book out there that follows the life and exploits of a great programmer like Carmack in so much detail.
If you don't practice, it doesn't matter how much talent you have.Exactly, greats don't just show up great. Carmack is considered great in the field of graphics programming, and if the Masters of Doom book is correct he is a mix of tons of talent and lots of practice.
I'll pass on the recommendation that previous HNers have to me: if you haven't read Masters of Doom yet, do it. Whether you're an entrepreneur or an engineer or both, it's a really inspirational and informative tale. It also talks about these .plan files.
Masters of Doom makes Carmack sound as responsible for ID's culture problems as anyone else. (Mind you, I'm not sure how reliable that impression is: in some places the author gives the impression that he'd pencilled in Carmack as the designated baddie of the story.)
Oh wow, I had no idea id had another hit on their hands. I just finished reading "Masters of Doom" and was craving some of the classic doom gaming experience that I had growing up.
Want to read more? Read Masters of Doom.
If anyone is interested in Carmack's backstory I recommend picking up a copy of "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture." It was published in 2004 so don't expect any of the newer stuff he has done but it is quite the read.
Carmack also was a programmer at Softdisk. It is detailed in Masters of Doom. If memory serves me well, at some point, he and other programmers were "unofficially borrowing" the company equipment during the weekends, then bringing it back early on Monday morning. They were caught at the end :-)
I don't think it has much to do with his salary. My view of him is largely positive as well, but from what I've read (Masters of Doom, a lot of his writing) he is not a man to whom empathy comes easily (which is not to say he isn't a good, moral man).
Cool; I just finished "
Masters of Doom" by David Kushner.
It tells the story of ID Software, the groundbreaking games they developed up to the split of the two Johns and then some.
A real interesting read for anybody interested in the subject.
Thanks, I see you have a couple of my favourite books The C P rogramming Language and Masters of Doom. I'll be reading the rest of your blog. Love the clean design!
Not sure what's in them because I can't find their Table of Contents, but if you're looking for other great books on specific games:
1. Masters of Doom
2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
I second this comment. I own Masters of Doom, and have read it 4 times. I've never read any other book more than once.
Interesting to see that this seems like it might be a theme at game dev places. I remember reading in Masters of Doom about developers constructing similar makeshift structures to shield their workspaces from light at John Romero's company, Ion Storm.
Everyone is focusing on the bonus part of the story but man, I really enjoyed the computing history about working inside DEC in those days.
Anyone got other good computing history books/stories to recommend? I really enjoyed Masters of Doom and Hard Drive (about old-testament Gates, not new-dove Gates)
If you liked this and haven't read it yet definitely check out
Masters of Doom![0]
It's about the two John's (Carmack and Romero) and how they created Doom, Quake et al. and why id Software broke up eventually. Very fascinating, highly recommended book!
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
* Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker
* Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
* What Doesn't Kill Us, by Scott Carney
* Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou
* The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondō
* How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams
Get "Masters of Doom" for a good read about some old masters.
For some of the history of that time, I suggest checking out "Masters of Doom : how two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture", by David Kushner. The book is 15 years old (!!!) at this point, but I think it's still a compelling read.
If you have a chance I suggest reading
Masters Of Doom.
http://www.davidkushner.com/book/masters-of-doom/. If it's one thing it taught me is that geography is not an issue when building masterful apps. The id team moved from Shreveport, LA to Madison, WI to Mesquite, TX. All the while they were gathering talent, ideas from all around the country while grinding away at code.
I read both Blood, Sweat and Pixels and Masters of Doom over the holidays. Definitely recommend BSP
Eh, judging from the Masters of Doom book, i wouldn't take his words seriously considering the tension that existed at the time between the two and how Carmack basically burned out himself during Quake's development. Romero wasn't the only one who left id at the time.
Wow, I imagined this only as couple of screens plus game mechanics, it's way more impressive than that.
It seems appropriate to bring up Masters of Doom here - I would recommend reading it if you are at all interested in Carmack, Romero, gamedev, programming, startups... so basically all HN users. It's a great book.
Wil Wheaton reads Masters of Doom, almost worth it for his impressions alone. “Sid Meier’s Memoir” is great along the same genre.
If you enjoy these blog posts, you might want to check out 'Masters of Doom' by David Kushner. It's about John Carmack & Romero and id Software's early years (The Johns' childhoods through to Quake 3). Like these blog posts, it's more of a story of the early id team and games than anything else.
Would you know/recommend any books from the early Microsoft era? I enjoyed Masters of Doom and would love to know if there is anything which goes into that much detail of the early days of Microsoft, actually any company would be interesting.
It's all very nice disparaging people for having found a passion, but when I read
Masters of Doom, I didn't pity John Carmack and John Romero and their gang for programming all week, then 'borrowing' work computers to program and play D&D all weekend. I admired them. They found a thing they loved to do with people they loved to do it with.
Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there! These were incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative people expressing their intelligence and creativity. They weren't lesser men for their passion. It elevated them.
Tons! Here are a few casual reads I enjoyed:
* Masters of Doom
* Where Wizards Stay Up Late
* Working in Public
I haven't read Masters of DOOM but I did enjoy the other two books. And yes, the Inner Game of Tennis is more about the "inner game" than the tennis. And the inner game applies to everything in life. Too bad you didn't appreciate the book but I guess to each his own.
The post title is misleading. 'Masters of Doom' is not a book on John Carmack's adolescent years alone, but a book focusing on the lives of both Carmack and John Romero, with a few other 'minor' characters, who were the main people behind idSoftware. It is a fascinating read.
If you don't know who Tom Hall is, I highly recommend the book Masters of Doom. It's definitely a fun read.
"Masters of Doom" is a pretty demonstrative and entertaining bit of non-fiction that walks through the early days of id Software. Though not a manual or how-to, or anything like that, I'd recommend it to a non-technical founder or manager because it does a great job evoking the thrill of creation/breakthrough that is pretty central to the "hacker mindset".
I'd add the following:
- Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- I recommend this to every entrepreneur and technologist I know, if only because it will inspire you to create something great.
- Masters of Doom (David Kushner) -- History of id software
- Game Over (David Sheff) -- History of Nintendo; seriously wild
+ Hacker Ethic by Steven Levy
+ Masters of Doom by David Kushner
+ The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas Stanley
+ The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham
+ The Essays of Warren Buffet by Lawrence Cunningham
+ Buffet by Roger Lowenstein
+ The Knack by Norm Brodsky
+ Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
+ The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day
+ Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
+ Road to Serfdom by Hayek
+ Iacocca:An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca
+1 for Masters of Doom. It's the best computer game book I've ever read.
Great article - cool to get an inside look at tools, IDE environments, art sketches etc.
Such an exciting time for PC games, with ID way out at the forefront - highly recommend the Masters of Doom book mentioned in the article too, it's a deep dive into the making and eventual impact of Doom. Great snapshot of the ID guys and of that time period.
>
Masters of DoomNo likable "characters" in that one. Fun reading about the era though.
I started reading “Masters of Doom” in my school’s library on a break between classes, and I ended up reading the whole book from start to finish in a single sitting.
1. The Demon Under the Microscope... (T.Hager)
2. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Heinlein)
3. Masters of Doom... (D.Kushner)
4. Paycheck (P.Dick)
5. Dealers of Lightning (M.Hiltzik)
I loved reading "
Masters of Doom." It's an easy read, and a fascinating story about a handful of people of had a remarkable influence on an entire industry.
Also, I learned by reading it that Carmack and Romero created Commander Keen (somehow I'd never made that connection with their later games). Commander Keen was my Mario. Perhaps it was more than that. It introduced me to shareware, which led me to BBSs, and then the Internet.
I thoroughly enjoyed
Masters of Doom.
At the time, I recall a number of people who read the book bemoaning 1991 as a bygone era of opportunity, as if all the good ideas and opportunities to invent had been "used up". Interesting how different people take the same text as self-defeating vs inspiring.
Also, on the topic of inspirational books, I always have to mention Skunk Works[0], one of my all-time favorites.
0: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003
> Location: Wisconsin; actively looking to relocate to a warmer climate.
Hah, reminds me of the same thing happening to the ID Software team, as recounted in the Masters of Doom book.
The phonebook, because it has customers and your competition.
Nothing has helped me grow more than actually running a startup a couple of times.
If you're just looking for startup-themed books, I'd honestly suggest Masters of Doom, Dreaming in Code, and Soul of a New Machine.
Lean Startup if you're feeling trendy.
Maybe it was a revolution in video games. But to me, it coincided with my forced transition from Amiga to PC. From then, I almost completely stopped playing video games (and programming as a hobby).
On a side note, I recommend the book "masters of doom" that that tells the story behind the game.
I definitely agree with getting value from books about companies/people you admire. I think it's more memorable to read about real people's actions and lifestyles as opposed to reading "how-to" or "self-help" books, though I read those too and have received value from them as well.
Here are some books I'd recommend in the former vein:
1. Elon Musk - as mentioned, awesome, inspiring read
2. Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull's story of Pixar
3. Masters of Doom - Carmack is a boss
4. The Innovators - The people who created the computing world
5. Hackers - The people who created the computing world
6. Steve Jobs - obligatory, whether positive/negative
Having just read Masters of Doom, he doesn't give nearly enough credit to diet soda! For me though, I don't feel John Carmack is the kind of guy to hold up like simba to the morning rays. He did his best programming when there wasn't people going on about agile and test driven development and all of the stuff that leeches away at creativity and fun.
A few stand out:
- Vagabonding (Potts): made me travel more than ever
- Steve Jobs (Isaacson): amazing life story, beautifully described
- The Mom Test: required reading for any young founder/PM IMO, I've gifted this more than any other book
- It doesn't have to be crazy at work (DHH/Fried): best advice on how to run a company in a sustainable way to maximize team happiness & output
- Masters of Doom: epically entertaining, super nostalgic
Masters of Doom I read recently and devoured it in about two days. I am apparently starved for stories like that. I don't even like video games!
I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I enjoyed
Masters of Doom.
Barbarians Led by Bill Gates is an older book, but interesting to get a sense of MS was like in earlier times.
Isaacson's Steve Jobs is obviously focused on Job, but gives a good sense of the companies he ran while he was there.
Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is a good view into the Mac specifically.
He was the Dungeon Master in their Dungeons & Dragons games. John Romero loved Carmack's campaign world, but John Romero destroyed it, Opening up a gateway to hell, and then immediately regretted it (but they got the idea for Doom from it), since it was a long running campaign in a world completely designed by John Carmack. I think Heretic/Hexen and Quake also borrowed heavily from their D&D games. Masters of Doom is an awesome book.
I think it's awesome Carmack and Abrash are working together again. I read "
Masters of Doom" back in the day, and it totally rocked my mind and took me back to a time when I was too young to realize just how impactful Carmack was on the industry that I enjoyed as a kid.
I just wouldn't have predicted that their comeback to the limelight would be working for Facebook. In my eyes, they were "bigger" than that (obviously not monetarily). They "meant" more to me. This is all subjective stuff I realize, and yes I've heard a zillion times "how good it is for VR", but it kind of indirectly gives a message that the best thing a genius who is already capable of changing the world can do is work for Facebook instead of do their own thing.
Call me a softy, but something just warms my heart when I see smart people stand out on their own, unswayed by the massive "power monoliths" surrounding them, and STILL kick ass. That's what Facebook did! And that was awesome! I just hope that spirit of entrepreneurship doesn't fade, and that geniuses know their power lies within themselves — not in deep pockets of any company.
Congrats to all involved though — I can only imagine what kind of crazy office days are ahead. The sequel to "Masters of Doom" is yet to be written.
Recently re-listened the audio book version of Masters of Doom. Really recommended.
Some great books have already been mentioned but those which were the most personally influential which haven't yet been mentioned:
- Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
- Kochland by Christopher Leonard
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
I read a lot of "business consultant" books and began to be annoyed with them since many of them can be summed up by the title and the first couple of chapters.
I like the books above because they presented factual events that allow you to draw your own conclusions.
I especially like Schwarzenegger's book and Bad Blood because of their depth. It was interesting to hear about Schwarzenegger's crazy business ideas like how he became a millionaire before becoming an actor and how he bought a 747.
I found the audiobook "Master's of Doom" (book is 2003 but audiobook is newer) to be really entertaining as it was read by actor Wil Wheaton who did a great job.
Yep, Carmack would be great; on the other hand, you can learn pretty much
everything you need to know about how he started id Software with his friends by reading the great book "
Masters of Doom" (I strongly recommend it).
George Broussard and the Duke Nukem team would be great, too (the brilliant guy who wrote the then-ubercool 3D game engine was still a kid at the time!)
By the way: web startups are great but they aren't the only ones. "Founders at work" is a great, great resource but it would have been even greater if it focused a little less on web stuff.
A very brilliant guy is Matt Dillon. Not the actor... well, he certainly is brilliant too ;) The software developer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillon_(computer_scientist)
He started a few startups but he is mostly known as a BSD kernel developer wizard. He started the very innovative DragonflyBSD project (a fork of FreeBSD with impressive goals).
Chuck Moore (inventor of Forth and computer visionary) started/was part of a few startups, too. Lately, he has been with IntellaSys creating an impressive, radically-different microprocessor ("SEAforth").
The story of Bill Joy (BSD, TCP/IP hacker and co-founder of Sun Microsystems) would be cool, too.
The Lisp Machine guys would be great as well (though there already is some info available of the net).
And why not founders in fields not related at all with computers? The founders of Bose, Hobie Cat, etc.
EDIT: yes, there is a lot of superlatives :)
Hackers & Masters of Doom are two of my favourite books. And I'm not even really a gamer.
This news gives me the shivers.
(I recently read "masters of doom" after a HN recommendation, so a couple of months ago I'd have been like "what? who?".)
Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, keeps a cool reading list with tons of books, color coded by the impact they had on him. He's clearly a voracious reader on a wide range of topics. I happened to find it yesterday and found tons of books and authors to add to my Amazon wishlists:
https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelfIf you're interested in games / startup stories, I have to recommend Masters of Doom, about the early days of id. It's thrilling and exciting to read: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult... - It's also in the news that USA has ordered a pilot for a TV adaptation. Here's hoping it's good!
Damnit, that's cool.
I recently read "Masters of Doom." It's the "stories" of John Carmack and John Romero. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it highly.
In the book they describe a "android like hum" that Carmack makes when he talks. I'm wondering if this is the "Iiiiii" noise that he makes in this video.
Specs of the book stack:
- Masters of Doom
- Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
- Mid Century Modern At Home
- Scandinavian Style at Home
I just finished this book. It wasn't a bad book, but after
Masters of Doom it seemed pretty mediocre.
Every story was about something interesting, but they were all pretty shallow. At the end, regardless of the actual outcome, they pretended it was a massive victory where the devs pulled off the impossible. In some cases it was accurate, in other cases the companies were financially successful, but didn't quite capture the magic of previous games.
Masters of Doom is a fantastic read, I had the kindle edition and had to track down a hardback copy after reading it. I wanted it on my shelf.
The author has a new novel out titled Jacked which I believe tells the story of Rockstar games but I haven't read it yet. Has anyone else? Is it good?
I feel like it would be lacking some of the nostalgia and lure of Masters of Doom. The celebrity and talent of Carmack is legendary in our industry and Romero's arc makes him a compelling foil later in the story. Additionally, id software's games are the games that I grew up playing as opposed to Rockstar's games which I have only seen in passing.
>
Masters Of DoomYes! I listened to the audiobook version of this which was read by Wil Wheaton, great stuff.
Thanks for the other suggestions - I'm going to start with Drive as I liked Daniel Pink's latest book but haven't read Drive yet.
I like conversational style, and 5 hours is a good length for a book - I hate it when a 5 hour book gets dragged out to 10.
This may be because I have always admired John Carmack, and because I love video games - although I am drawn to all kind of different book genres, but "
Masters of Doom" had a profound effect on me.
I read it every few months, and I have gifted it to family and friends, and most of them loved it as well.
It’s not the writing, nor the story per se that stand out, it’s not just about how it beautiful highlights and highs and the lows of the Johns’s symbiotic relationship and their accomplishments, it’s not even about how their skills, strengths and weaknesses play into their success and failures (which I am sure is typical of most co-founders stories).
It’s about empowering the reader to believe that everything’s possible, and how smart, hard-working people can build technologies that affect the lives of many.
This book works wonders for when I am going through burn-outs, or I am not motivated enough to pursue a problem or a project.
When I am done reading the book, I am excited and eager to get back into the game. I can’t recommend it enough.
"It was first released on December 10, 1993, when a shareware copy was uploaded to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin."
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm sure they published it later via a variety of publishers, but they made a ton off of the shareware version. Masters of Doom is a fantastic read, if you haven't read it.
- How to Start a Startup (YC)
- How to Build a Startup (Steve Blank on Udacity)
- CS183/Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
- CS184: Startup Engineering (Balaji S. Srinivasan)
Best:
Pando Monthly: interviews by Sarah Lacy with founders and VCs. Many go for two or three hours. She goes beyond the PR story and touches on details, doubts, decisions.
This Week in Startups: interviews by Jason Calacanis. You'll learn things that are not in the PR story. Check out the Uber interview with Travis Kalanick for some gore inceptions details..
- Founders at Work (book by Jessica Livingston)
- any book you find by someone who's done it before. VCs, founders, etc. Relevant books can be Jordan Mechner's book about Prince of Persia, Eric Schmidt about Google, Masters of Doom. These contain gems about crucial moments and how people went about doing things, building product, distribution, relations. Peeking behind the curtain.
The obligatory mention: If you haven't yet, go ahead and read Masters of Doom. It's the story of id Software, really well written and worth your time.
I'm currently reading Masters of Doom, and I can't help but chuckle: John Carmack was doing this in 1990 on the PC platform. Back then it was considered too slow to do side-scrolling.
I found the book "The definitive book of body language: How to read others's thoughts by their gestures" by Allan and Barbara Pease to be a great read.
The greatest show on Earth - Richard Dawkins was an excellent read.
Surely you're joking Mr Feynman by Richard p.Feynman was terrific read by a very small bit can considerred offensive or at the least dated in its outlook but if you can get past that its great!
I recently finished a book on ID called "Masters of doom" by David Kushner which I rather enjoyed as well.
I also love reading about crackers from the (mostly) 80's and I can recommend.
Cuckoo Egg by Cliff Stoll
Masters of deception
We are anonymous - Inside the hacker world of lulzsec, anonymous and the global cyber insurgency by Parmy Olson
I loved "Underground Hacking Madness and the obsession on the electronic frontier" once I got past the first 2 or 3 chapters (also it was researched by Julian Assange before wikileak and has a chapter about his hacking) An Ebook copy can be found on the authors website http://www.underground-book.net/download.php3
Ghost in the wire Kevin Mitnick
"He is clearly far more excited these days about VR and where it can go."
Actually according to the book Masters of Doom he's been that since the beginning of iD and not just these days.
It also gives the perception that he's always been more about pushing gaming technology (or just general technology) rather than being in it for the gaming itself.
We are highly lucky to be in a time where it is very easy to switch among high paying jobs across various companies. If you are able to get by with 10% of your mental capacity, I am sure you would be able to land up a lot of jobs. I would recommend you apply to many places, and take it from there, depending on the interviewing experience.
I don't think you really need to learn anything special for job interviews. There is no necessity to understand special technologies, as most good companies are fine as long as you have any experience with similar things.
I would also recommend you read books on programmers. I recently read "Masters of Doom", and it might open your eyes into goal driven programmers and their impact on the world.
Also, out of curiosity, which companies do you think have a higher hiring bar than Google?
I read the book
Masters of Doom a few years ago and they did a good job portraying them as creative rivals with clashing personalities.
I don't know if they've reconciled in recent years and I've never heard about Romero working at a gas station. Any source for that?
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
I remember I accidentally come to know about Masters of Doom which got me interested in Game Programming. Googling around I found a number of interesting articles such as "1500 archers on a 28.8: Network programming in Age of Empires and beyond", and I eventually stumbled upon Fabien Sanglard's site. The guy is great and I waited eagerly for the release of his book (hopefully the first of a long series) :)
I'm going to take a very different stance here from others.
First, you should ask yourself - what kind of engineer do you want to be. Why are you building?
Then, read about the people who became the best and their early days. What did they do when they were in your position? Did they study a set of topics or did they pursue their passions? Taking and highly-weighing advice from people not at the top of the field could be very detrimental to your development as an engineer.
From reading books like: Coders at work, Masters of Doom, Making of Karateka, you will realize that the best engineers were driven by their ideas and projects very early on. They ended up learning to make things happen. But don't take my word for it, find these people, study their stories and pick the path you would enjoy the most.
This approach will not just make you a strong career engineer, but could turn you into one of the greats - the people that get to push the field forward.
Masters of Doom is the shortest authistic kind of book, if you think Masters of Doom is "long" then you've never picked up a book man. I redad 12x masters of doom per "day" where day might mean 21 hours 30 hours per stretch I don' tfollow normal hours. Thank f for not having a schedule I can do quality productive shit all "day". 24 hour day is a retarded concept. It will limit you substantially.
As I've also recently finished reading _
Masters of Doom_ (as a result of HN's discussion of Jeff Atwood's blog post about it [0]), I know that the Wired article has it wrong in the first sentence. Doom wasn't uploaded to a Univ of Washington server, rather Univ of Wisconsin.
The book was a really good and quick read. One point I'll make about its content was how it told of Carmack reading Steve Levey's _Hackers_ (1984) and thought that's where he belonged. I was happy to learn about his alignment with free software.
Wolfenstein 3d was my first non-console game. I enjoyed it tremendously, as with Doom and Hexen. I'm currently a COD addict.
The term "deathmatch" was an insight of Romero's upon experiencing the beginning of multiplayer. That was also nice to find out, that deathmatch came from Doom. It has totally stuck since, as team deathmatch is considered the default game type in COD.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6570439
- The Prince (get's a bad press, thought provoking)
- Apex [Nexus 3] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Factfulness (Awesome, most important book I read this year)
- Prisoners of Geography (why nations act the way they do)
- Crux [Nexus 2] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Debt: the first 5000 years (slog to get through but interesting)
- Nexus [Nexus 1] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Digitocracy (super short story, super powerful message)
- Artemis (Not as good as the martian)
- Before Mars (Starts out great, fizzles out)
- Down and Out in Magic Kingdom (How reputation based social currency might pan out)
- Blood Sweat and Pixels (How games are really made)
- Masters of Doom (Awesome story of how the game was made and what it led to)
- Foundation [Foundation 1] (Prescient with where the world is, what might happen in reality)
- Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that can't... (Ok, not great, read it on blinkist)
- Ender's Game (Under rated, most fun I had reading this year, I know...)
- Neuromancer (classic, must read)
- Pre-suation (interesting and worth reading if starting a consumer facing business)
- The Three-Body Problem (Found it tedious, honestly. Interesting though)
- Radical Candour (A lot of common sense advice we take for granted and could do better with)
- Seveneves (Longggggg, but really worth it. Shame about the ending)
- The Virgin Banker (Really good read, how a bank came into being)
- Why information grows (Great read, could of been half the length, would recommend)
- Babylon Revisited (Meh)
- Money: the Unauthorised Biography (Simplistic history of money before and after coin. Good)
- Hellbent (Enjoyed it, good for a holiday read)
- Snow Crash (Classic, Awesome, read it)
- The little prince (must read)
- To Pixar and Beyond (A different viewpoint on Jobs)
Whenever Masters of Doom is mentioned, my ears perk up. I've read it four times. Again, definitely worth the read.
I recently tried to make a list of good virtual reality reads (not all of them cyberpunk, though):
Otherland - Tad Williams
Ready Player One
Daemon - David Suarez
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Shadowrun - ?? there are lots of possibly varying quality, I only read the ones by Nigel Findley which I liked
Snowcrash - Stephenson
Reamde - Stephenson
Der falsche Spiegel - Sergej Lukianenko (not sure about the english name)
Masters of Doom - Story of ID developing the games Doom and Quake - not really a VR story, but it sets the mood.
Pollen - Jeff Noon
Bruce Sterling is great, too, but I don't remember which of his stories are about virtual reality.
I suppose Ian Bank's "The Culture" novels might be a candidate, but I haven't read them yet.
I absolutely agree. When I watched this for the first time ~6 months ago it was crazy how much of this relatable oh-so-familiar stuff was taking place before I existed, the central date of March 31, 1998 being about 3 months before I was born.
Programmers these days stand on the shoulders of giants, most of them still living and breathing. And it is a priceless gift that it is so much easier to learn this craft when you're starting out.
It is a huge mistake to be the smartest person in a room, so I seek out people who floor me, people who are good at what I want to be good at. The Internet, built by our heroes, allow us young programmers to talk to our heroes as if they were people, and I suppose that helps us to discover that that's all they are.
Edit: If you enjoyed this, another personal-story-tinged entertaining-but-technical diamond I can recommend is a book about id Software, Masters of Doom.
In the process of finishing Masters of Doom, definitely worth the read.
Masters of Doom about John Carmack and John Romero is in big part about the shareware days and the art vs business of programming.
Looking at first 5 or so pages, I've read a lot of these. Good stuff but seems very unilateral view on the world and I think could be unhealthy for founders to focus too much on startups.
Not sure what is the right mix, but some of the most motivating reads for me were:
- Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
- iWoz
- The Soul of a New Machine
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
- The Mighty Micro: Impact of the Computer Revolution
- Accidental Empires
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Great timing for this question, I just completed the audiobook and was also looking for something similar.
Masters of Doom is probably the best book I have ever consumed. It was extremely motivating, the description of everything made me wish I could go back in time and be there so badly.
Think of having a goal you are so passionate about reaching, that you don't care about food, baths or anything else, you just want to work on this 20 hours a day. Must have been amazing.
Myself, I definitely will have a look at the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom "Game Engine Black Book" by Fabien Sanglard.
I've read masters of doom. Why does the Sweeny/CliffB partnership work, while Carmack and Romero failed?
I met John Romero once through a woman I was dating. I didn’t really know who he was or his history. When my girlfriend told me he created Doom and Battle.net, I was like, “oh, ok.” We had lunch with him and his Romanian girlfriend/wife (don’t remember their relationship). He seemed like a normal person. I’ll definitely check out the Masters of Doom book now.
The most recent articles on DOOM are especially relevant here, because some of the names involved in Ion Storm (though not as directly involved in Deus Ex) show up in the various tales about DOOM and the early Shareware era.
(Jimmy Maher also is pretty good about citing sources and the book Masters of DOOM is cited several times as a primary source, which is also why it is recommended several times in sibling comments.)
In the short term you can get used to it. I used to get vr sickness instantly when moving with a joystick but eventually you get used to it. I now have zero vr sickness even when doing crazy physics defying spinning or something.
As for the long term - my hope is that it gets better as the headsets get better. It seems to so far.
One sort of interesting thing along these lines - I remember in the book "Masters of Doom" they're describing the early days of FPS development and how people would frequently get very nautious and grab the trash can by their desk to vomit.
You never hear about that anymore. What is that? Better screens? Playing games when you're a kid? Whatever is at work there, seems like it might apply to vr too.
I'm having difficulties interpreting this. By high level, you mean game design? I read
Masters of Doom too and it was a fantastic read. But for me what I really found interesting was how the "two Johns" were able to leverage their different personalities, skill sets and areas of focus in a way that allowed Id Software to become a world famous studio. Since I'm more of a technical guy, I found the glimpses into the business side of software / game development to be illuminating. In particular, I really got a kick out of learning about the "shareware" model of selling games - it's incredible the sums of money they were able to get just from that alone. Also it was interesting to see how once you've established a reputation for yourself in the industry it's easy to acquire capital for future ventures, even though the fundamentals of these new ventures may not be obvious. Perhaps it had something to do with the climate at the time (dot com mania) but the amount of venture funding John Romero and Tom Hall were able to secure for Ion Storm and how that capital was subsequently (wasted) is utterly mind boggling to me.
If you ask me John Romero made Eidos his b*h, not his fans!
They weren't written in 2018, but some I enjoyed:
* Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Steven Levy)
* Masters of DOOM (David Kushner)
* The simpsons and their mathematical secrets (Simon Singh)
* Countdown to zero day (about stuxnet, by Kim Zetter)
* Sapiens: A brief history of human kind (Yuval Noah Harari)
* Coders at work (Some interviews, not all, but I enjoyed it. By Peter Seibel)
Counterpoint (just to manage expectations - you should read it for sure!): I was hyped to read the book, but ended up finding it a bit tedious. The technical parts were not technical enough (sometimes flat-out wrong, or maybe, naive sounding?) and the rock star parts got repetitive (even a lot of the same phrases used over and over). Still great fun, but not as good as I'd hoped.
I'd recommend Fabien Sanglards's Wolfenstein and Doom books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/). These go into WAY TOO MUCH technical info (in a great way!), but don't cover any of the hilarious rock-star antics.
My secret wish is someone would re-write Masters Of Doom to be 25% more Game Engine Black Book, and fix up some of the prose!
The book
Masters of Doom gives more information. It's a good read about the early days of id and the gaming industry in general.
Carmack would go on 'research getaways' to hack on the Quake 3 engine. He did this because, at the time, the id office was not conducive to his work style. "Trinity" was the codename for the Quake 3 engine.
"The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates is an interesting look into what Bill envisioned for the Internet. It came with a CD-ROM full of videos of how devices would be used in schools and workplaces (I thonk law enforcement too if I remember correctly). The videos are much better than the book.
"The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" was eye opening for me regarding the life of Jobs, his family life, and his business involvements.
"Masters of Doom" by David Kushner chronicles the history of id Software and its creators. It's an entertaining book for sure, especially the part where id has Gwar show up at Microsoft.
"Close to the Machine" by Ellen Ullman is the memoir of a software developer in the 80s. I need to read this one again, but it was enjoyable. I think about one part in particular from time to time where the author recounts being offered a job to work on an aging mainframe. The man pitching the job is probably the last person around who's dedicated to maintaining it. She would have made a lot of money doing it, but the work itself looked to be soul draining, so she skipped it fpr pther opportunities
"The Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman documents the story of Kevin Mitnick, the so-called most wanted hacker alive. Certainly has some surprises and is a fun read.
Pretty much anything by Norbert Wiener regarding cybernetics is interesting from a historical perspective. I've read several but the one that comes to mind immediately is "God and Golem, Inc". While unfinished, it goes into cybernetics, which was a practice or idea that technology could interface with biological life in a complementary way and those ways should be pursued. I think he was ultimately successful since we take a lot of those ideas for granted today.
"The Computer and The Brain" by John von Neumann is a great and short read. It mostly talks about how binary signals can be fired by synapses in the brain.
>
Masters of DOOM: A homage from a fanboy meant for other fanboys. It definitely has its bits of brilliance but it is still a chore to finish.
Can I recommend the audiobook? For what it's worth I found Masters of DOOM to be great. Mostly because the writing style _really_ does a good job of communicating the personalities of the people involved. I'm not a video game guy, in fact I've never played DOOM, but I still enjoyed it start to finish.
Almost same exact story although I never got into Doom modding but did make my own games in high school because of doom. Actually reading "Masters of Doom" truly planted the seed for my entrepreneurial spirit, the first time I realized "I can get good at something and create something just for me. I can value just from sheer will"
Fantastic read! I disagree with the point that Mario 64 was not fun though. The novelty of the 3D platformer experience combined with the open world concept made that game something truly amazing.
I've always dreamed of working with experts of such caliber in a startup. It seems luck (being in the right place at the right time) is important as is a prepared mind (jumping at the right opportunity from the sea that life presents you with).
I have three great book suggestions for people interested in the history behind video games:
1) Masters of Doom
2) Game Over
3) Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution
For memo, I just created a file so the list could be augmented at:
https://github.com/jhadjar/Notes/blob/master/creation_proces...-----
Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but I really liked:
- The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
- Masters of Doom - David Kushner.
- Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston (aggregate of stories)
Pretty cool in different ways:
- The first shows how the author documented a good chunk of the process (like solving the problem of the Prince's alter ego).
- The second by the journalistic work the author went through and access he had.
- The third by the context it gives on many things (for example, you get a glimpse on Palantir's current work by looking into Paypal's history and the work Max Levchin, CTO at the time, and his team did on fraud detection, or Hotmail's growth tactics).
Lots of classic stories on gamasutra. But I agree, more documentation of historical work is needed.
There are some great reads out there about gamedev and gaming history, though:
- Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
- The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent was required reading for me in college
- Game Over by David Sheff
- Dungeon Hacks by David Craddock
Games should be about story the same way a painting should be about story. Gameplay mechanics are the paints, and should be applied with intent for best results.
Sure, some abstract painting is great. Tetris is as well. But that's not the norm.
As for Carmack, we all know he's the tech guy and great at it. What's important is how the tools he creates are used. I've not played Rage yet, but I hear it's mediocre. I'm not brokenhearted over that.
What does hit me though, is QuakeLive.com's irrelevance in id's/Bethesda's planning. I'd love to see them first add a second game with worthwhile teamplay to compete with Team Fortress 2 (which is something id/B should've been ahead of.)
Secondly they need to provide a strong modding API and let players rent servers to host their mods on, and even let players run ads or charge for access if they want. Become the platform.
Finally, since I now realize I'm just writing a long id wishlist, I want the original team back for one more romp... I want them to be leads for Bethesda in relaunching Quake. Only this time, do it as an open world FPSRPG a la Fallout/Morrowind. Base it off of the old pen and paper rpg sessions that they all used to play that Carmack DMed, and Romero destroyed when he took the Diakatana from a demon. (All wonderfully discussed in the Masters of Doom book.)
... God this post got a little crazy.
Second most doesn't mean anything when you're talking about three arrangements, realistically.
I would like it to be true that solo founders have just as much chance of success. I have been unable to find a cofounder for years, and I am not biased against solo companies. People are unpredictable, and even wildly successful companies have some disheartening back stories. I've learned that from books like Idea Man (Microsoft) and Masters of Doom (id Software) where founding members got screwed by morally challenged cofounders. In the case of id, Tom Hall received nothing from id in the end, and forfeited all of his equity when he was fired. Because they decided he wasn't needed anymore, despite him being there from the beginning through the tough times.
But it stands to reason that you are better off if you can find someone who is honest and is going to work hard with you, simply because two heads are better than one. When used together at least. Emphasis on honest, I would rank trust and ethics over experience and intelligence.
If you can't find that person, and you are determined, then may as well go ahead and go it alone. You only live once. Just realize the odds are stacked even higher against you. You are only lying to yourself if you refuse to accept that truth.
And you can be a cofounder of a successful company, but still fail miserably and have it all taken away by a bad cofounder.
Probably not what he intended, but what I gained from his advice is that it's better to deeply understand a project than to just focus on building out features. I often fixate on the latter to the detriment of gaining understanding of the bigger picture. So whereas you could focus on one feature and get it done quicker, if you dive deep and understand more of the bigger system it's part of, you can not only go into features with better conceptual understanding, but you can even understand how changes will relate to other parts of the system and foresee potential consequences.
For any fan of Carmack, Doom (the game), or just video games in general, I recommend reading "Masters of Doom". Carmack's story honestly reads like a programming/general nerd rockstar in the book, and it's a lot of fun. Also helps me understand what kind of personality it takes to be considered one of the best ever at something: for much of his early life, Carmack was essentially awake just to program. His home was basically a mattress and a computer at one point, IIRC.
This article reminded me of a trend I noticed when reading the book "
Masters of Doom," which discussed (among other things) the graphical improvements that made games like Wolfenstein and Doom so impressive. Very often, the book's prose would start sentences something along the lines of "though the graphics were crude, etc etc etc."
These sorts of lines, constantly repeated, irked me, not because they weren't technically true or anything, but because it's such a "looking-backward" point of view. At the time, that's not how people saw it. It was all about pushing forward the state of the art, and we miss something when we look back on it in that way.
I guess in a similar way I've had the same feeling about "modern" pixel art, where it often seems to miss the point. By treating it as just an art style, it turns it from an exercise in conveying a vision despite limitations, into an effort to simplify and downsample because those are the most easily-recognized surface-level hallmarks of that period.
For me, the magic of that era comes from seeing techniques like color cycling ( http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=0 ), where the desire to get a certain effect led to interesting workarounds, rather than being satisfied with limitations because it's "retro."
David Kushner's excellent book "
Masters of Doom" certainly paints a picture of Carmack being mainly interested in solving problems above everything else. Made me think of this passage from the beginning of chapter 4 (before becoming rich, when they were just starting up id Software):
> Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web ol problems and solutions, imagination and code. He kept nothing from the past–no pictures, no records, no games, no computer disks. He didn’t even save copies of his first games, Wraith and Shadowforge. There was no yearbook to remind of his time at school, no magazine copies of his early publications. He kept nothing but what he needed at the time. His bedroom consisted of a lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and a stack of books. There was no mattress. All he brought with him from home was a cat named Mitzi (a gift from his stepfamily) with a mean streak and a reckless bladder.
Eleven years later, in Time in 2001, commenting on the infamous split with John Romero:
> John Carmack doesn't disagree with Romero's description of their clashing priorities. "I'm doing what I want to do now, and it happens to be making us millions of dollars," he told TIME last week, in one of his first public comments on the split with his former partner. Carmack doesn't want to grow id into a big company. "There's only so many Ferraris I want to own," he says. But he takes issue with Romero's version of their breakup. "John's a good designer, and he's got artistic talent. But the fact is that after he got rich and famous, the push to work just wasn't there anymore." Romero didn't quit last fall, says Carmack. "He was handed his resignation." [0]
[0] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,137916,...
Thanks for linking to that video, it was fun to watch. I've looked at the 90s' id games differently ever since I read Masters of Doom 10 years ago (due for a re-read soon) - learning their history made me appreciate those games on a whole new level. Their story was a very big inspiration and motivation boost for my own modest projects.
Wow, I'm just now seeing this news. Initially, I had that
sinking feeling set in... I mean, like you, I have been impacted by his story, his games (not just the Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake franchises... I'm talking Commander Keen, boys and girls), his code, reading
Masters of Doom, etc.
I can see my copy of Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition sitting here, which was such a treat to read when it came out, because it has so many great chapters on the development of Quake and little stories about John's discoveries and thought processes throughout the development of the game.
But, then I thought... wait... this is a new beginning. I wrote about this previously, but, look for gaming to start heading in the direction of VR with technology like Oculus Rift. Also, with someone of the caliber of John Carmack involved (now totally focused on it because of the resignation announcement) with not only his passion and skill, but his ability to work with graphics hardware manufacturers and driver developers to effect change and garner the necessary support and backing, expect to see vibrant, compelling developments in this field.
In case you missed it, check this video out of John discussing some of his VR work. It is from E3 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg
That momentary sinking feeling has faded away now... great things are ahead!
All the other crap aside, I kind of envy him for getting into VR now. The recent news about Oculus, and reading "
Masters Of Doom", have somehow given me a renewed excitement for the field again. What if those snow crash visions could become a reality after all? (Sans the sword fighting, I think it is not possible because of the speed of light?).
I'd be excited to work in that area, but I have no idea how to go about it in a sensible way. I mean how could I contribute as a single individual, without having a company on my hands?
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield (unsure how I felt about this one, but it's short so worth a read)
Deep Work - Cal Newport (recommended)
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert (recommended)
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals - Heidi Grant-Halvorson (lots of great stuff in here, highly recommended)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley (I really like biographies and Malcolm X was a pretty interesting person. recommended)
Making It in Real Estate: Starting Out as a Developer - John McNellis (meh)
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (I'm not big on sci-fi, so this book surprised me with how good it was. recommended)
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl (I'm not sure how much I got out of it, but worth it just for learning about Frankl's unique experiences and perspectives. recommended)
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (meh)
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner (One of those books that makes you want to lock yourself in a room and program for hours. Carmack's dedication and intellect is especially awe-inspiring. recommended)
I love
Masters Of Doom, it's one of my favourite books (make of that what you will). But I guess the main difference is that the id guys were pushing boundaries and working themselves to the bone on something they truly loved and felt passionate about. It was self-imposed and unlike the hordes of faceless developers working in sweatshop conditions to churn out the latest CoD or whatever, they actually received a huge amount of credit (and the fame and fortune that goes with it) for their hard work.
I agree, there's definitely this romanticised image of game development in the developer community. It's something I always aspired to get into but the sacrifices don't seem to be worth the rewards, at least in my case.
Masters of Doom is such a fun, good book. I ended up power reading a few summers ago.
If you grew up playing Doom, and all the other shareware games like Hexen, Heretic, etc... reading about Id Software's start and history is more interesting than I ever thought it would be.
Another book that drew me in was "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels". It's a collection of short-ish game creation stories packaged into a book. Really candid interviews and writing.
Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, really enjoyed reading that.
From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting as the Masters of Doom, but still a very interesting little read.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Prince-Persia-Journals/dp/1...
Edit. Oh yes, just remembered. For a real trip down memory lane you might want to check out Speccy Nation[2] too. It took me about an hour to flick through but it was so much fun, afterwards I had to call up my best friend from the time (another ZX Spectrum addict) and tell him to buy a copy!
[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speccy-Nation-ebook/dp/B0096BFBSA
Great interview! I would definitely be interested in a history of Unreal in full book length form. And if anyone hasn't already perused "
Masters of Doom" by David Kushner on the early days of Id Software, it is such a good read.
Regarding the Haskell love. I believe Unreal contributed to the design of a research functional programming language prototype called Cayenne back in the day:
Cayenne—a language with dependent types
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=289451
I think another historical note is how everybody developed on SGI machines in the late 1990s. Primarily, due to Maya modeling. But the 3D graphics API wars were certainly a factor:
Direct 3D and OpenGL by Paul Hsieh
http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/windoze/OpenGLvsDirect3D.html
And, yeah, MSDOS ZZT from 1991 is still playable via Internet Archive ;)
https://archive.org/details/msdos_ZZT_1991
>>I think I speak for a lot of programmers, and not just game devs, when I say that the romanticization of Id's history has painted one of the most ideal programmer stories, and one that I often have fantasized living, or at least have imagined what it would have been like to be on that team in the glory days.
I guess. I assume you've read Masters of Doom and other relatively factual accounts of their history? It's not exactly the most reasonable behavior, and you can get that kind of death march abuse on any sort of game development team today.
We owe Carmack a lot. Doesn't make working for him some sort of pleasurable experience. Most innovators are like this.
Never read
Masters of Doom but this excerpt about id Software in John Craddock's new book Rocket Jump was a fascinating long read:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/101156/rocket-jump-quake-an...
I grew up in this era so I'm certainly enamored by the nostalgia trip but I have a lot of respect for the team at id, it's fascinating to read about all of the mundane aspects of ray tracing and compressing color palettes enough such that a game like Doom or Quake could actually work. id probably did more than any other company at the time to make programming seem like an alternative subculture instead of a science and to make games these dark and moody experiences that were a blast to play (especially with friends via LAN).
You could also argue that good health is a privilege. It is. But it isn't special. The late 70s were a time when computers were flooding the marketplace, and that could only happen if they were affordable for regular people.
I graduated in 1979 with a whole class of people who were quite capable of doing what Gates and Jobs did, and that's just from one university. But we didn't, and Gates/Jobs did. How do you explain that?
My father was career military. That isn't a recipe for wealth, and is an avenue available to millions of people.
You might be interested in the book "Masters of Doom" about John Carmack and John Romero. They had none of the privileges you assert, and yet vaulted to the top of the gaming industry.
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius -- A fine classic I enjoyed.
Might count, might not, since it finished in March but was going on before. I loved Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky - http://hpmor.com/
Loved Masters of Doom - David Kushner
I liked Worm - Wildbow - https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ -- but it falls short of overall greatness and I don't think it's worth its 22-average-books length if I were to go back in time and decide on rereading...
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I) - Janice Kim -- I've been learning Go and thought this book was particularly excellent for beginners.
There are at least 4 other books I'm close to finishing and I might get one done before the end of the month... Volume 2 of the above Go series, Mythical Man-Month, A handbook of traditional living, or The Waking Dream.
I didn't like Wil Wheaton's reading of Ready Player One either. The main character came off as, I don't know, whiney I guess. I have nothing against Wil Wheaton himself. The reading just didn't do it for me.
Masters of Doom is a great book though. I read it a couple years back. I recommend picking up a copy if the audiobook isn't working out.
I also think it's a great book, but partly because it
is technical.
Charles is great at explaining how computers actually work with circuit diagrams from the ground up in a way that's articulate, clear, and engaging. I think I learned more from this book than I did in my CS architecture class.
The historical context he puts it in helps with clarity since it's easier to understand when you know how each successive step built on the previous one.
In addition to the Dream Machine, I'd also mention Steven Levy's Hackers as an obvious one to read.
Some others I've read:
- What the dormouse said (this one was just okay, but interesting to see some of the cultural context at the time).
- Crypto (about the history of cryptography). I really liked this one, but people I've recommended it to found it dry.
- In the Plex (history of Google)
- Masters of Doom (John Carmack, John Romero and Id Software)
Related Fiction:
- Microserfs
- The Soul of a New Machine
- The Phoenix Project (fiction paired with the Dev Ops Handbook)
As said elsewhere, you can read all about Carmack in
Masters of Doom. Besides, I think he'd have technical rather than entrepreneurial advice to give. Still, if he made the cut I'd read his interview voraciously anyway.
I'm not looking forward to Molyneux, though.
Get an advanced degree only if you want to do it, or it clearly benefits you - say, migration to some country. You are not limited anymore by paper in your carrier progression within IT industry after your first job - your achievements will open the doors.
Let me also address psychological aspects. You are much more than a university certificate, you are not defined by it. You can self-educate yourself on a lot of technical and non-technical topics, you can have interesting hobbies, create, challenge yourself physically. There are potentially so much more to do to help you succeed in relationships.
Do not build barriers that cause anxiety, do not dream how much better your would be if you had a fancy degree - you live once, accept yourself, and invest in yourself in what you really want.
I totally understand you btw, I have a non-CS degree from a no-name university in a small post-Soviet country. You can imagine that I felt a bit insecure about it as well. 5 years on, I stopped worrying about it, when realised that my employers and people around me in general judged me by my current contributions and character.
In IT, we basically only need to dedicate focus and time to improve ourselves. No barriers like expensive equipment or official accreditation. Also, maybe, read Masters of Doom, a book about John Carmack for inspiration.
Do you dispute that Carmack built rockets?
Have you read Masters of Doom or even Googled the question?
http://bfy.tw/H8Z5
It's very clear to me what the parent is saying. The people you give as example only got that recognition long after doing the work that established their career. In an interview process at the start of their careers this work had not been done and their talent could hardly have been recognized in an interview process. Actually, after reading Masters of Doom I am pretty sure that a 20 year old Carmack or Romero would not get hired at any company in the entire state of California that has an HR team. This due to personality traits, lacking educational pedigree and poor work history.
After recently reading "
Masters of Doom" (not sure how I went so long without reading it) this reminds me a lot of similar stories about the id guys and particularly Romero. So many creative, ambitious people get involved in the production of games and other digital art but so often they run into the limitations of time, budget, and project management. To get the money, you need to hype the hell out of a project (Daikatana?) but even if you get the investment, it's rarely enough to actually get the right people together and actually build something within the amount of time the market demands.
I'd imagine the same thing goes for films as well. Start with an incredibly ambitious concept only to find that you need to hype the hell out of it in order to get the necessary investment. But then with outside investment comes the requirement that the finished product be released within a certain timeframe and meet certain expectations in terms of profits generated. It's no wonder that for all of the talented and dedicated artists out there (in games or film), the majority of what gets released is either disappointing, unoriginal, or at best, pretty damn good...but rarely mindblowing or something that elevates the entire state of the art.
> Interesting; my strategy has been almost the polar opposite of his ('learn widely', not 'deeply'), and it served me well so far.
This whole kind of advice is not very useful in practise. Copying a recipe for success from a person that is wildly different in personality than you will not lead to the same outcomes.
If you've read Masters of Doom, it is evident that Carmack is not neuro-typical. Few people have the ability to concentrate like him. There is no point trying to become like him, this will only make you miserable. Don't fall for post-hoc rationalisation: he naturally gravitated towards it and became successful. 200 years ago he might have been a scholarly monk, or a watchmaker tinkering.
You have to choose your own path. Doesn't mean you cannot learn from the mistakes of others, but this will probably be about how and less about what.
I have read
Masters of Doom and both The Cuckoo's Egg and Dealers of Lightning and these recommendations are spot on. I'd love to reread all of these soon, especially Dealers of Lightning.
Something similar but perhaps a bit drier may be Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely about the personal computer wars. And yes, that's the same Cringely from the Triumph of the Nerds documentaries.
I also do not recommend David Kushner's Prepare to Meet Thy Doom and The World's Most Dangerous Geek audiobooks which I believe are anthologies of loosely related articles he has written over the years. The prose was a little too purple for me.
The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Those are the two to start with.
If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books).
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy.
Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order):
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson
What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Masters Of Doom - The value of an unbalanced life and focused hard work. Also, how to start a startup. A really fun read, to boot.
Fooled By Randomness - a) Survivorship bias. b) If you look at revealed preferences, people choose regular small gains with a rare huge loss over regular small losses and a rare huge gain even though that choice is -ev. c) Much more!
Hackers and Painters - One of the most insightful, subversive, and surprising texts out there.
C Interfaces and Implementations - Great examples of good API design and how to build clean modular code.
The Paleo Manifesto - Explains how the origin of religion was probably as a set of models for coping with the transition from hunting/gathering to civilized agriculture. The part of the book where he points out that the story of the fall of man in the Bible is probably the story of this transition is super interesting.
The Game - Made me realize that the narrative told by boomer and gen-x parents about how to attract a woman is probably doing young men (and women) more harm than good. I would not try to treat this as a how-to manual, though. A fun yarn.
Starting Strength - After years of fumbling around in the gym this cut through a lot of bad ideas about fitness, exercise, strength, and health. It lead to the first real (and lasting) progress I've ever made physically.
Understanding Comics - Understanding art and visual communication.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Up there with Hackers & Painters in its rate of insight & surprise per page.
Fail Safe Investing - Thought provoking ideas about why we invest and how best to go about doing that. (The ideas stand up, IMO, but some of the concrete advice on how to implement those ideas is very dated.)
Good Calories, Bad Calories - It turns out that even scientists can be dishonest and corrupted by politics.
Now and then I wonder why Doom was such a perfect game, mostly I think it is nostalgia besides revolutionary technique at that time. I've also read the book "
Masters of Doom" and would recommend anyone who wants to get inspired on creating something from almost nothing by some sort of following your heart and using your (smart) brains. It makes me happy to read the book.
The main ingredients which imho make Doom classic:
- creepy/spacey/metal Adlib music, thanks to Bobby Prince (Adlib was good for that)
- simple, but effective spooky samples playing at random locations
- for the time good textures (need some good graphics artists) to give it a dark feeling
- kiss play experience (see how it probably would be done nowadays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw )
- VGA-graphics, I keep saying this to people: VGA is pixely, but somehow I don't see that when playing Doom, I compare it with cartoon drawings, you don't focus on the details, but how it looks globally and use a bit of fantasy to bring it to life - nowadays graphics are so detailed that I somehow get distracted by too much detail, it's becoming too realistic almost and doesn't look like a 'game' anymore
- deathmatch or coop via modem, calling your friend to play a match via the telephone line, warning your parents that they are not allowed to pick up the phone, playing not too long because you had to pay per minute (in The Netherlands at least)
- everything packed in a few diskettes (3 or 4?) was at that time almost magic that you could have such a 3d world fitting on it
There are many more reasons why for me Doom will always have a good reputation for me, mostly because of a combination of properties which came together at that time.
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
In no particular order.
Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw. Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.
Computer history is one of my favorite topics, so I've read a lot over the years. Here's my list:
>> Classic computer history:
- "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", Steven Levy
- "The Innovators", Walter Isaacson
- "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley", Adam Fisher [innovative format, tons of interesting tidbits after you get used to the style. Read only after the other two above]
- "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story", Michael Lewis
- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", Alan Deutschman
- "Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", Andy Hertzfeld
- "Masters of Doom", David Kushner
- "Idea Man", Paul Allen
- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", Katie Hafner
>> Entertaining stories, but less historical value:
- "Ghost in the Wires", Kevin Mitnick
- "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley", Antonio Garcia Martinez
- "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal", Nick Bilton
>> On my to-read queue:
- "How the Internet Happened", Brian McCullough [just started; very promising]
- "Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age", Leslie Berlin
- "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of WWII", Liza Mundy
- "Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer", Paul Freiberger / Michael Swaine
>> Others worth mentioning (but just read a few chapters):
- "The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray", Charles Murray [about Cray Computers]
- "Racing the Beam" [about Atari]
- "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" [about Commodore]
>> Bonus:
- "Art of Atari", Tim Lapetino [great as a coffee table book, particularly if you grew up in the 80's :) ]
This is very interesting. I (yesterday, coincidentally) finished reading
Masters of Doom, the book about id by David Kushner. While generally a good read, it had a very fanboyish tone towards both the Johns. It really portrayed Carmack as absolutely superhuman when it came to coding. Given the tone of the rest of the book I'd assumed he was exaggerating — it sounds like he wasn't after all, about that at least.
I don't know C so I can't, let alone appreciate, the source he's released to judge for myself.
Thanks for sharing.
"
Masters of Doom" by David Kushner
It'd been on my list for quite awhile but I just got around to it a few months ago. It was fascinating to read about all the games I'd played growing up. For those who haven't read it - it covers pretty much the birth of the gaming industry as we know it today not just Doom. It goes all the way back to when Romero was writing games and sending them in to magazines to be included on disks. Carmack has always been an icon for me so it was interesting to read about him on a more personal level.
In addition to the interest factor - it was also quite inspiring to me. It certainly increased my drive to get stuff done. If the early history of PC gaming interests you at all; or you just want to read a page turner of a book about people not that dissimilar from you I'd highly recommend it.
Masters of Doom by David Kushner. It’s about the history of id Software and its founders. The audiobook is narrated by Wil Wheaton and he does a killer job at it.
Masters of Doom was one the books that really steeled my resolve to get into game programming back when I'd read it in highschool. It's a fascinating story about the birth and development of ID Software (the folks that made Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and are near singlehandedly responsible for us having consumer-grade graphics cards of note today). It's a fun, easy read, and the personalities involved are quite amazing. Both Carmack and Romero are painted in very human lights, and it's a fascinating insight into how to run a growth company without venture capital.
It's the ultimate bootstrap and find market fit and make bank story you'll likely ever read.
~
Later, you should also read Soul of a New Machine and Dreaming in Code for a less calvinball approach to software development.
I agree low-attention multitasking is what works.
Standing on the bus, running, kneading dough, ok.
Listening to a book and trying to code, no chance.
I disagree on what kind work best, for me "divulgation-level" non-fiction is the one. Think Malcolm Gladwell.
Actual fiction can be complex because it requires attention on who is talking, where they are, whether you're in a time skip or flashbacks etc. Divulgation doesn't.
For example, I've recently listened to The World Until Yesterday[0] and Masters of Doom[1].
They are both reasonably light, they tend to hit the same concepts over and over, there are few "characters", and generally missing 30 seconds of narration has close to zero impact.
But also, I'm fairly sure reading skills is what counts the most. I'm not even sure it's a matter of "being best" as it is a matter of a reader just sounding better for a specific person.
[0] http://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-World-until-Yesterday-...
[1] http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Masters-of-Doom-Audio...
This looks like a super interesting book.
Masters of Doom really captured my imagination when I was young and is probably the #1 reason I'm in programming today.
Does this book have anything "actionable" or is it more an historical overview of the Wolfenstein engine? Will I have the knowledge to implement a similar engine afterwards? (Probably will get it either way, though)
> In reliability planning, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. A single founder is a SPoF. They get cancer, get an unsupportive SO, get a needy family member, lose a rich uncle, etc., they kill the company. Having 2+ founders guards against these likelihoods (over the course of the company).
Not really true at all, as has been pointed out by other posters.
In the book "masters of doom" they relate that even though Id software had 4 founders when it came time for them to get key man insurance the only person they got it on was John Carmack.
I'd think that most companies are like this. There may be multiple co-founders but there is usually one signifcant one, who if they quit, would sink the company very quickly.
May I suggest Hackers by Steven Levy [0]. It was a phenomenal and inspirational read for me. Having born during the turn of the century, I'd missed the evolution of computers and programming. This book helped me fill that gap.
Incidentally, Hackers was what I read after I read Masters of Doom. Here's a quote from Masters of Doom:
"
Overnight, it seemed, Carmack was in a strange house, with a strange family and going to a strange school, a junior high with no gifted program or computer’s. He’d never felt so alone. Then one day he realized he wasn’t. The book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was a revelation.
"
Edit:
Donald Knuth heartily recommends it too[1].
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar...
[1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/retd.html
Nice to see this here, thanks for sharing it cmsimike.
This was a labor of love/appreciation for me a couple of years ago over a Christmas break. I went through a retro gamedev period during that break, read a few books like Masters of Doom, and found myself trying to read through the various (relatively poor quality) electronic copies of the Black Book that were floating around. Yak shaving being what it is, I spent most of my Christmas break scraping and cleaning up a few different copies to put this together so I could (more comfortably) read it on my Kindle.
FWIW, these conversions were done with an eye for preserving an interesting piece of gaming/graphics programming history, and aren't really intended to be relevant today.
I also converted the Zen of Assembly Language also by Abrash[1], but it's considerably less relevant than the Black Book in general.
[1] https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm
100% Agree. Just add another point:
Rich people with supportive networks of course can pursuit their goals easier.
Occasionally people from not very good families can do this as well because they're so screwed by the environment and tried to get rid of everything in (the book 'Masters of DOOM' is an example assuming it doesn't try to be too dramatic).
It's much harder to do the same as middle classes with a lot of life obligations, distractions, and most importantly they are by default need to follow linear career developments - it's much harder to be adventurous to had drastic improvement compared to previous categories.
Masters of Doom is an awesome read. If you are into gaming, graphics or the history of id Software... order it today.
Here are some excerpts from the book that I particularly enjoyed:
"On a cold winter day, Carmack laced up his shoes, slipped on his jacket, and headed out into the Madison snow. The town was blanketed in the stuff, cars caked in frost, trees dangling ice. Carmack endured the chill because he had no car; he'd sold the MGB long before. It was easy enough for him to shut out the weather, just like he could, when necessary, shut Tom and Romero's antics out of his mind. He was on a mission.
Carmack stepped into the local bank and requested a cashier's check for $11,000. The money was for a NeXT computer, the latest machine from Steve Jobs, cocreator of Apple. The NeXT, a stealth black cube, surpassed the promise of Jobs's earlier machines by incorporating NeXTSTEP, a powerful system tailor-made for custom software development. The market for PCs and games was exploding, and this was the perfect tool to create more dynamic titles for the increasingly viable gaming platform. It was the ultimate Christmas present for the ultimate in young graphics programmers, Carmack."
Of course, the book wouldn't be complete without Ferrari details and discussion:
"At a showroom, they admired a gleaming new Testarossa that listed at $90,000. Carmack was treating cars like he treated his games; he had already grown somewhat tired of his current engine. What he really wanted was one of these. [...] Carmack paid cash for a red one to match his 328.
[...]
But Carmack's Ferrari didn't stay in the lot for long. Within days he drove it over to Norwood Autocraft and started on the modifications - he wanted to get the car, which ran at four hundred horsepower, at least twice as strong. Bob Norwood, who had become Carmack's automotive mentor, had a master plan: to install a twin turbo system that would not just double but triple the car's horsepower. For added energy, they put in a computer-controlled device that would inject a burst of nitrous oxide."
On the spirit of
Masters of Doom, I recommend "It's behind you - The making of a computer Game" by Bob Pape.
The author explains how he made the R-Type conversion for the ZX Spectrum 48k and provides an interesting view of the "bedroom coders" and the early video game industry in the UK back in the 80s.
Self-published and downloadable for free here: http://bizzley.com/
What if, and I'm just thinking out loud here, the digital product (software) was free but you had to receive an activation code (by snail mail) to use it?
Terrible user experience for sure, but under what taxation would this fall?
I have read 'masters of doom' last night and I can't believe we used to ship around 'installation disks wrapped in ziploc bags', but maybe it's time to get back to that? j/k
I see loads of great suggestions in this thread, let me just add three of my LEAST favourite nonfiction books:
Thinking, Fast and Slow: Really should have been subtitled The Ludic Fallacy Run Amok. Filled with grand generalisations based on dubious conclusions from small under-powered behavioural experiments. Read if you want further evidence that Behavioural Economics, that bastard child of psychology is an edifice built on bullshit.
Masters of DOOM: A homage from a fanboy meant for other fanboys. It definitely has its bits of brilliance but it is still a chore to finish.
The Inner Game of Tennis: At 161 pages it might seem short but is in fact 160 pages too long. I bought it after someone on HN said its advice wasn't really about tennis but about life. I wonder what that person was smoking at the time.
It's interesting to hear more about the video game industry insides.
I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom)
They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular game which made them all rich.
I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry. I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on and on how much he had to work and wasn't compensated for it, etc.
The DRM-free "
Masters of Doom" audiobook is currently (expires July 10-ish) included in the "Hackers, Gamers & Geeks" Humble Books Bundle for $15, along with a bunch of other video game history audiobooks, including "Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And More True Gaming Stories" also by by David Kushner at the $8 level.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/hackers-gamers-geeks-audi...
I've not read Masters of Doom, but I have heard Carmack describe his school-age self as a huge jerk. However, for a least the past 15 years he seems to have pulled a Gates (before Gates did) and has come across as one of the most genuine, nice people in tech. Not just in big, public displays but in every little thing he does in the constant public interaction that he has.
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/NEXTSTEPFrom my memory of reading Masters of Doom, they developed for where they expected the consumer PC hardware market to be at the time of release. If you wanted that hardware at the time they were developing, $10k Next workstations were your best bet.
When Doom came out, I (and most other folks) needed a new PC.
Ports to multiple platforms were pretty common in those days with games and that's something the team had a lot of experience with from their years at Softdisk. Having looked at the game code, it's not really terribly difficult.
Yeah definitely I was thinking about him while driving home today. In the book Masters of Doom you get a good sense for how much time he spent thinking and programming out ideas he came up in what seems like total-isolation. There wasn't Internet or books on the subject available at the time because it didn't exist yet. In the Graphics Programming Black Book there are also anecdotes by Abrash that give you a sense for what kind of solitary genius this guy has.
1. Being lower-class in America means things like your parents are not well educated, they don't have any significant amount of savings, you attend public school, you aren't prepped for college, your parents can't pay for college, your parents can't support you as an adult, etc. They're not middle-class, and not upper-class, so they're lower-class.
2. Bill Gates parents were very upper-class, he attended expensive private school, was pushed into Harvard, and he had exclusive access to brand new computers that almost no children did at the time. Jobs/Carmack had no access similar to computers at private school.
3. I've read Masters of Doom and don't think any reasonable person would describe him as "an asshole" at all. Defining someone by their flaws says more about the definer than the defined.
The first step to wisdom is calling things by their proper name. This is not elitism, simply stating facts. He wouldn't be called "Surgeon" if he were to advise a manufacturing company on how their tools should look nicer.
What you're witnessing in this thread isn't elitism as much as it is people who've ruined their eyes wanting to set the record clear.
Furthermore, that "Jobs" movie will probably appeal to most people because it's probably not accurate. It's probably a movie that will portray Steve Jobs as that genius who knew the future before everyone else, who've seen how Apple would be 20 years before everyone else. Anyone with more than 2 neurons knows it's a bunch of crap. You can't know how the end result will be designing a really small thing, let alone an empire.
In addition, it's "Cinema", not History nor Journalism. Want to read a good book? Read "Masters of Doom". That's how you get multiple opinions from people involved in the story, not some kind of lame movie based on the only authorized biography of a person, as brilliant as that person may be.
And lastly, come on, attacking Woz? If someone manages to get the respect of Engineers, you can be sure it's not because of his wits or Reality Distortion Field. Last time I checked, this is Hacker News. If there is any place elitism is the de facto constitution, it's in the Hackerdom.
My advice is to follow gaming history and reuse engine code as much as possible. Use SDL2 as it is barebone and yet privides you sophisticated tools.
Here is a list of 12 games that I picked because I'm biased towards RPG but you can definitely choose your own wishlist.
Part one: Warm up and basic input, audio and video.
Pong, Snake, Tetris, Breakout, Galaxian, Frogger.
Part Two: Scrolling screen, levels and overall game architecture:
Super Mario, Gradius, Twinbee
Part Three: RPGs which are more or less "complete" games and need some tooling:
Ultima III, Wizardry I Japanese version, Dungeon Master
Part Four: Just keep practicing. You already graduated and can do whatever you want!
Also don't forgrt to read Masters of Doom which will give you tons of inspiration. You can actually walk Carmack's route as well. His first commercial game is an Ultima spin off called Wraith.
Might be a little off-topic, but I dislike Walter Isaacson's style. His biography of Steve Jobs was in my opinion underwhelming. I remember some time ago I read Jeff Atwood's blog about this exact same thing. He mentioned how he would've loved to read something more akin to David Kushner's "Masters of Doom" about Jobs. And I wholeheartedly agree with him having read both. Can someone who has read "Leonardo da Vinci" share some info on whether it's the same style like in his Jobs biography?
My impression after reading "Masters of Doom" was that Carmack never really wanted to be in the licensing business. The main driver behind id's early licensing pursuits was Romero, and although Carmack went along, he did so without enthusiasm. After Romero got fired, there was no one at id pushing for the studio to do much besides making games. Epic Games, on the other hand, took engine licensing very seriously from the beginning. There is a feeling of "continuity" between iterations of their technology, and this is very important to toolkit licensees, and something that you don't get from id. I've always felt that Tim Sweeney has a lot more business acumen than most people would expect from a programmer.
Masters of Doom, by David Kushner.
Some books that I recently read and enjoyed:
Non-fiction
a) Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)
b) Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (Kim Zetter)
c) Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Steven Levy)
d) Masters of Doom (David Kushner)
Fiction:
e) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy)
f) Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)
Last year I read
Masters of Doom by David Kushner after someone mentioned it on Hacker News. It was the best book I had read in a long time. It won't improve your skills, but I think it will motivate and inspire you to immerse yourself (if we're talking programming, doing small projects and getting feedback is a better way to improve your skills anyway).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom
If you have not yet read "
Masters of Doom", I strongly advise any aspiring hackerpreneur to read it. It's an enthralling and easy read and details the early day of id, including the releases of their breakout hits "Commander Keen", "Wolfenstein 3D", "Doom", and "Quake", as well as the fall of Romero, following his departure from id, particularly with the "Daikatana" flop.
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
I read it when it was new 8 years ago, and I think I'm probably due for another reading, myself.
Masters of Doom may well be the only book I've finished this year. I'm currently reading a few novels and The Snowball (Buffet's bio) but it is a slow process because of the overwhelming amount of time I spend reading news, technical resources, comics, and short stories.
I cannot recommend Masters of Doom highly enough to anyone on this website. It's about the rise of Id games and the technological and cultural breakthroughs they made in the industry. Kushner expertly weaves a tale about video games, programming and entrepreneurship in a way that few can. His attention to detail is masterful -- not simply an overabundance of detail, but detail in all the places it belongs. I really felt like I was there with the two great Johns, just as invested in the future of Id as they were.
heh, read all about this dude back when I read Masters of Doom.
His mention of Masters of Doom was interesting, because that book is really what got me into programming. The reality of corporate programming when compared to the freewheeling hang-out-with-your-friends-eating-pizza-listening-to-metal-inventing-cool-things programming described in the book has been a real bummer. Does that style of programming even exist any more?
This comment seriously makes me question what you think lower-class is or is like. The comment comes off as tone-deaf.
Neither of them are "self-made", they both had crazy access to electronics that hardly anyone else did at the time. They both did amazing things but, you're hand-waving away their real history for some "bootstrap-y" American success story.
Also, John Carmack WAS an asshole at id. Read Masters Of Doom sometime when you get a chance, loads of hubris and broken friendships in there.
Yes, to say the least... I do not know what paved the way for all aforementioned programmers put after reading about Carmacks work in "Masters of Doom" I'd say focus is extremely important... And at least myself is extremely bad at it - there is always 10-ich projects going on... If you want success today I think being extremely specialized is a must.
If this is all it takes to demoralize you, don't go into gaming. I put it off for years myself because of the EA spouse scandal in 2004. When I graduated, I went into web development instead. Years later, I had a convenient opportunity to work at a gaming company and only stayed in the industry for 3 years.
When people say only work in gaming if you can't imagine doing anything else, they mean it. The work is hard, the hours are long, the people are "colorful" and most gaming companies are completely disorganized, even by startup standards. Read "masters of doom" and realize what is depicted in that book is practically industry standard, including the egos, yelling, screaming and off-color humor. Some see those things are a bonus. Some don't.
The upsides are the technical problems and the coolness factor. To a certain extent, gaming has ruined me for web development. After coding a solution to efficiently visualize an EXPLODING PLANET, it's hard to get excited about creating yet another social network.
I have to second this. Reading Masters of Doom right after it came out during my freshman year of high school really shaped my interests and world views for the rest of my life. The two lead characters of Romero and Carmack were so realistic and yet larger-than-life that I just knew I had to be a part of something big and relevant.
I was under the impression that a lot of startups are run by single people with time to burn "toiling upward in the night"
I recently read "Masters of Doom" because someone here recommended it, and both id software and ion storm were mainly run by single people working hellish 80-120 hour weeks. Technically John Romero had kids, but... early on in his startup he divorced in order to free up more time for making games.
Yeah, Carmack has a history of unethical behavior. From the book "
Masters of Doom":
> Late one night Carmack and his friends snuck up to a nearby school where they knew there were Apple II machines. Carmack had read about how a thermite paste could be used to melt through glass, but he needed some kind of adhesive material, like Vaseline. He mixed the concoction and applied it to the window, dissolving the glass so they could pop out holes to crawl through. A fat friend, however, had more than a little trouble squeezing inside; he reached through the hole instead and opened the window to let himself in. Doing so, he triggered the silent alarm. The cops came in no time.
> The fourteen-year-old Carmack was sent for psychiatric evaluation to help determine his sentence. He came into the room with a sizable chip on his shoulder. The interview didn’t go well. Carmack was later told the contents of his evaluation: “Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs ... no empathy for other human beings.” At one point the man twiddled his pencil and asked Carmack, “If you hadn’t been caught, do you think you would have done something like this again?”
> “If I hadn’t been caught,” Carmack replied honestly, “yes, I probably would have done that again.”
> Later he ran into the psychiatrist, who told him, “You know, it’s not very smart to tell someone you’re going to go do a crime again.”
> “I said, ‘if I hadn’t been caught,’ goddamn it!” Carmack replied. He was sentenced to one year in a small juvenile detention home in town. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II.
Wolfenstein 3D played a large part of driving my interest in computers and learning how they really work under the hood when I was young. Plus the release of MapEdit really made you feel powerful and a young kid getting involved in computers.
Doom is the point where I became interested in programming and it got me looking to how you actually made these games. id Software eventually open sourcing Wolf3D really helped spur that on. On top of that, Carmacks talk and his always interesting .plan file (a blog before blogs) made him seem very accessible and really opened up the world of game programming. I still enjoy going back and reading parts of the Wolf 3D or Doom code to see how they handled certain problems/limitations.
I'd agree with the other poster that 'Masters of Doom' is a great read and worth it to grab if you haven't read it already.
I picked up programming after degrees in Mechanical and Chemical engineering, wanting to understand things more than make something immediately marketable, and I've been feeling this way for a while.
Reading "Masters of Doom" I couldn't help but feel that the technical constraints that existed at the time bred craftsmanship that seems hard to justify these days. Still trying, though.
As a follow-up, anyone have any books written about the Dotcom era? I was still fairly young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of it and I can’t find any books or shows that cover it. Lots of stuff from the 70s/80s/early 90s (
Masters of Doom, Cuckoos Egg, Halt and Catch Fire, Pirates of Silicon Valley), and lots of stuff from modern Silicon Valley (Bad Blood, Silicon Valley, the various Steve Jobs movies/books) but it seems like the startup world from 1995 to 2002 is just a blank space waiting to be filled.
What about Yahoo and Amazon and Pets.com and Webvan and eBay? What about stock being used for toilet paper and employees wheeling their Aeron chairs home when the company folded? What about Enron? How did 9/11 impact the Dotcom bust? Hell, what programming languages/frameworks were they using?
Maybe it's an age thing? How old were you when it came out?
That game changed my life. It was the most immersive, scariest thing ever. It was 4 players (not 2), and we had endless LANs and modem games. We made maps, there were whole map-making communities, whole BBSes only talking about Doom and Doom 2 and Heretic and other games based on it.. It was the biggest thing ever, even bigger than Quake in many ways because there was a lot fewer similar games at the time. I played through the single player so many times that I can revisit most maps in my mind 15+ years later...
Even the book Masters of Doom is mostly about how that game was created, rather than Quake or other id games that came before or after because Doom truly was the game changer.
Ah, wasn't expecting a 500+ page pdf. All the words in the title trigger to think about presentations...
Actually I like the idea of full stories about the history of specific software. (Obviously haven't read this one just now, so can't say whether it's any good).
Does anyone know of other books (physical prints would be preferable to me) in this genre? Masters of Doom comes to mind, but it's a bit too much about the personal story maybe.
Edit: I see it's also available in print on Amazon
It's what you do with what you have and being open to always learning. Reading Masters of Doom and Making of Prince of Persia, I was around (if a few years younger) during this time but I didn't have the drive these people did until much later. If you have the drive, then you can do great things, regardless of the era.
Serious question: Has anyone ever written a "let your husband change the goddamn world!"-type book. Cause my wife is my barrier. Sure, I'll eat junk food, sit at the PC all day, sleep on the couch. But then half of the PC and half of the couch won't be mine for much longer"Masters of Doom" addresses this, I think, when it recounts how John Carmack stole an Apple II.
A master will always find a way. But his/her priorities may not always be shared or respected.
I have this weird habit where if I sit and read too much about the same topic, I have trouble retaining all of the information I just read. So, I find I can retain everything better if I read small amounts from multiple books. I sit with a stack of a few books and read chapter out of each. Weird, I know. Here's my current stack:
* The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition (Bjarne Stroustrup)
* Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 (Scott Meyers)
* Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach with WebGL (7th Edition) (Edward Angel & Dave Schreiner)
* Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture (David Kushner)
* Neuromancer (William Gibson)
I most recently finished:
* Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them (Cynthia Shapiro)
* C++ for dinosaurs (Nick Economidis)
I am highly anticipating the final(?) book of the Ender's Game Series by Orson Scott Card titled Shadows Alive.
I just learned about and probably will buy:
* The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
Just to jump in here too, Bill Gates and Windows appealed to games and being the platform to support them in the 90s when Carmack and Doom were pushing things forward back then too.
Currently reading Masters of Doom and it's really good in case people are interested.
Here's the Promo video shown at a Microsoft event back then (cringe warning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dVAhFYjp9c
You should read
Masters of Doom.
>The gamers weren’t just Softdisk guys anymore, they were, as they called
themselves, the IFD guys, co-owners of Ideas from the Deep. Softdisk, as a result, took on an even greater pallor. But it was a day job, a job they all needed since there was no real money coming in yet and no guarantee that it would come in at all. They decided, then, to continue working on titles for
Gamers Edge during the day while they churned out Commander Keen from the lake house at night.
>They became all the more efficient at "borrowing" the Softdisk computers. Every night after work they’d back their cars up to the office and load the machines. The next morning they’d come in early enough to bring the com-
puters back. They even got a little cocky about it. Though the machines were top of the line, they wanted some minor adjustments made..."
A very clever way to go out.
It instantly reminded me of the story of when Carmack and Romero decided to go on their own after they were working together at Softdisk. At the time, there were no side-scroller games for PC for performance reasons. Carmack (20 years old at the time) had an idea, I believe it was about shifting the pointer of the display (or something to that effect), that allowed smooth side-scrolling enough to emulate the effects of the NES. He stayed up all night, and left a floppy at Romero's desk for the next day. When Romero got in the next day, and played the disk, Romero pretty much said "That's it, we're outta here" and from that initial engine was born Commander Keen, and the beginning of the legend of John Carmack.
It's been a few years since I read the book "Masters of Doom", so some of the details are hazy, but I thoroughly recommend it.
Carmack's genius is just out of this world.
Edit: Factual Correction.
Steven Levy's
Hackers of course, but also his
Crypto which is in some ways even better.
Michael A. Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning about the heyday of computing research at Xerox PARC isn't universally praised (IIRC it's more or less Bob Metcalfe's version of the story) but it is very readable.
Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning, about the golden age of Japanese consumer electronics (wich also covers many events and actors in the US and UK).
David Kushner's Masters of Doom, about the heyday of Id Software.
The First Computers—History and Architectures is a more academic book, a selection of history papers, but it's still very readable. The Computer Pioneers: Pioneer Computers videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qundvme1Tik&list=PL14396C953... , presented by Gordon Moore himself, cover much of the same ground (it says little about the wartime Bletchley Park computers).
If I'm going to allow myself some videos then I should also mention Steve Blank "Secret History of Silicon Valley" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo and David Alan Grier's "When Computers Were Human" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwqltwvPnkw .
I just finished reading "
Masters of Doom" last night. The book is about id software, the company that made Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake and that pioneered 3D gaming. The book primarily follows John Carmack and John Romero, two of the founders of id. Carmack was responsible for developing almost all of the 3D engine code.
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.
Very cool links, thanks. I have been on a similar journey as I also finished reading "
Masters of Doom" last week.
Also interestingly, John Romero made a brief appearance at the Homebrew Computer Club Reunion last month (which I attended).
I would be very interested in hearing about your ideas for porting DoomEd to OS X. My contact is in my profile. I played Doom and Quake casually back in the day and followed the Daitkatana saga in the game magazines, but never got a chance to play seriously or mess around with the mods (I had a really crappy computer).
Read the book "
Masters of Doom". There's a part where John Romero wades across a flooded river during a huge thunderstorm to get to their secluded house where they are building what will become the game Castle Wolfenstein. He makes it across the river and into the house, and finds John Carmack already there, coding, who and had done the same thing to get to the house.
Push a deadline back because of a storm?
Really?
For anyone interested, the book "Dreaming in Code" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreaming_in_Code) had this sort of idea as a central thread--one of the main failures of the Chandler project seemed to be that, armed with adequate funding, development lost track of reality and sprawled into some degree of failure.
Contrast with, say, "Masters of Doom" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom) where the early id software team was so pressed for cash that they would "borrow" their employer's workstations during evenings to write their code. That's what I would consider "scrappy".
The reason I advocate that approach (other than it is what I do, to varying degrees of success, to support myself) is that it seems to be more straightforward a value prop than trying to sell an idea.
Read "Masters of Doom", read "Soul of a New Machine", read "The New New Thing", read iWoz: we see that products fail all the time, that pioneers take a bath, that the second mouse gets the cheese--but that engineers are always in demand.
A business can fail, but raw material is always being looked for.
1. I've actually tried not to read too many other entrepreneurship books -- something Zach Weiner taught me (he doesn't read many other webcomics) to encourage creativity. That said, some books that have helped me be he entrepreneur I am today are (in no particular order)
Masters Of Doom, Founders at Work, The Lorax, Drive, and White Man's Burden. Oh and PG essays of course.
I also really didn't want to waste my reader's time (my writing is pretty conversational and there are even some jokes in the book along with doodles) so I advertise on the back that the book can be read in 5 hrs (or a crosscountry flight).
2. Yep! They asked me to read it (I of course said yes, since Christopher Walken wasn't available).
Will check out BA when I get a chance. But can't imagine it will displace what remains my favourite "business" book of all time, the Id Software creation yarn:
Masters of Doom by David Kushner.
It was recently suggested to me that every entrepreneur should read Sir Richard Branson's autobiography. I was dismissive having read the LRB review of Bower's biography of "the stuntman": http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/david-runciman/the-stuntman.
Is "Losing My Virginity" worth a peruse? Or should we just wait for Gates himself to deliver his memoirs?
senkoonDec 3, 2020
InsanityonMay 15, 2019
kevin_morrillonJan 13, 2020
TedDoesntTalkonJune 5, 2020
snvsnonJune 25, 2019
m463onJan 7, 2020
bwh2onApr 16, 2021
Awesome read.
freyronAug 26, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
shortcordonDec 11, 2018
Paul_SonJan 10, 2017
kranneronApr 16, 2016
ieeamoonJuly 1, 2018
pomberonJune 1, 2018
stuxnet79onNov 21, 2017
minouyeonSep 12, 2014
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
prezjordanonDec 10, 2013
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
brooksbponJune 30, 2017
hashtreeonOct 24, 2013
Book examples: In the Plex, Masters of Doom, Steve Jobs, Founders at Work, Coders at Work
anjconJan 15, 2016
dansoonNov 22, 2013
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
Like reading iWoz... a lot of stories of brilliant engineering at an elite level.
yesimahumanonAug 7, 2013
AtmaScoutonSep 17, 2014
robodaleonJan 30, 2015
bbrizzionMar 12, 2014
randallmaonNov 26, 2013
lazyjonesonSep 24, 2013
83457onSep 28, 2017
MikeCaponeonJuly 26, 2012
nemesisrobotonJan 31, 2014
shaklee3onSep 1, 2018
lawnchair_larryonJan 7, 2020
pistoriusponMay 28, 2009
I just finished a great book based on the two John's from id Software called Masters of Doom [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...]. It was a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who loved games.
alanbyrneonOct 12, 2012
jmcgoughonMar 10, 2017
swivelmasteronMay 31, 2009
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
archagononJan 29, 2015
kinleydonSep 25, 2016
hadoukenioonSep 16, 2014
ArtWombonDec 11, 2018
MikeCaponeonSep 1, 2011
javeryonMar 20, 2015
joepouronDec 10, 2013
MaakuthonJuly 1, 2014
dorfussonDec 25, 2016
degenerateonJan 26, 2016
http://amzn.com/0812972155
infinotizeonDec 28, 2013
quickthrowmanonJan 7, 2020
The Cuckoo’s Egg is not quite similar to Masters of Doom, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, or Hackers, but it’s an extremely good book about tracking hackers and Berkeley Unix (BSD). It’s motivating in a similar way though :)
cubicle67onSep 2, 2008
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
mayankonMar 27, 2020
Smile/Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cu...
jayrobinonAug 7, 2013
MichaelTiesoonDec 10, 2013
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
systemvoltageonAug 5, 2021
Highly recommend - Masters of Doom audiobook: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-of-Doom-David-Kushner-audiobo...
paniconJune 19, 2016
Cthulhu_onJune 22, 2020
dominic_cocchonApr 9, 2015
eswatonNov 24, 2015
abraxaszonSep 16, 2014
r11tonOct 8, 2009
ZenzerNetonAug 18, 2009
wmichelinonMay 18, 2020
It's a great book, mostly about John Carmack and the guys at ID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom
lj3onFeb 17, 2017
joefritzonMay 15, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generat...
cubicle67onApr 7, 2009
I love these stories. For some reason they elicit quite an emotional response from me. Don't know what the emotion is though.
1880onSep 27, 2012
narratoronDec 15, 2015
matwoodonDec 2, 2011
Exactly, greats don't just show up great. Carmack is considered great in the field of graphics programming, and if the Masters of Doom book is correct he is a mix of tons of talent and lots of practice.
dopeboyonSep 25, 2016
phowatonSep 2, 2014
And it's being an extremely fun read so far.
leoconMar 4, 2015
tbrockonSep 10, 2016
SamReidHughesonFeb 13, 2011
InsanityonAug 29, 2019
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom?f...
Coincidentally, I just started re-reading it last week. It's quite a fun book :)
iopuyonApr 8, 2016
pizza234onNov 20, 2020
ellipticonMar 30, 2014
CaptainZapponDec 10, 2013
It tells the story of ID Software, the groundbreaking games they developed up to the split of the two Johns and then some.
A real interesting read for anybody interested in the subject.
catch404onApr 24, 2009
alfiedotwtfonMay 16, 2021
1. Masters of Doom
2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
robodaleonSep 1, 2018
sean-duffyonSep 5, 2018
rwieruchonJuly 12, 2018
* The Greatest Salesman in the World [1]
* Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture [2]
* [0] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1875763811
* [1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1875765552
* [2] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1875771565
xrefonApr 18, 2021
Anyone got other good computing history books/stories to recommend? I really enjoyed Masters of Doom and Hard Drive (about old-testament Gates, not new-dove Gates)
mxstbronFeb 18, 2017
It's about the two John's (Carmack and Romero) and how they created Doom, Quake et al. and why id Software broke up eventually. Very fascinating, highly recommended book!
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
dangoldinonNov 3, 2011
guiambrosonDec 23, 2018
* Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
* What Doesn't Kill Us, by Scott Carney
* Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou
* The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondō
* How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams
modonFeb 17, 2017
CaliforniaKarlonJune 13, 2018
larrydagonJune 29, 2020
sunny--techonJan 7, 2020
badsectoraculaonOct 13, 2017
shadelessonDec 15, 2015
It seems appropriate to bring up Masters of Doom here - I would recommend reading it if you are at all interested in Carmack, Romero, gamedev, programming, startups... so basically all HN users. It's a great book.
b33j0ronJuly 19, 2021
AugusteonAug 16, 2012
jmcdowellonFeb 6, 2014
senkoonDec 11, 2016
arjieonSep 18, 2017
Other people have to do many things to be happy, but they found it all there! These were incredibly intelligent, incredibly creative people expressing their intelligence and creativity. They weren't lesser men for their passion. It elevated them.
bwh2onApr 21, 2021
* Masters of Doom
* Where Wizards Stay Up Late
* Working in Public
bubbliciousonJuly 30, 2014
staktraceonDec 23, 2018
plahteenlahtionDec 24, 2018
Lost and Founder: The Mostly Awful, Sometimes Awesome Truth about Building a Tech Startup
by Rand Fishkin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156
Transforming NOKIA: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead Through Colossal Change
by Risto Siilasmaa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39850907
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
by David Kushner
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
by Daniel Coyle
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25870385
How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story
by Billy Gallagher
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34964879
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
by Richard P. Rumelt
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36658033
brikis98onDec 24, 2015
From that list, my favorite ones were:
The Four Steps to the Epiphany: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/827338560
Made to Stick: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/897777811
How to Measure Anything: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/698402984
The Non-Designer's Design Book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1170518622
Masters of Doom: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/899580915
The Martian: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1136330196
The Mistborn Trilogy: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1388373037
radmuzomonJan 27, 2015
krschultzonJan 8, 2015
gameman144onMay 15, 2020
daekenonMay 24, 2012
- Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- I recommend this to every entrepreneur and technologist I know, if only because it will inspire you to create something great.
- Masters of Doom (David Kushner) -- History of id software
- Game Over (David Sheff) -- History of Nintendo; seriously wild
loganfrederickonDec 5, 2010
+ Masters of Doom by David Kushner
+ The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas Stanley
+ The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham
+ The Essays of Warren Buffet by Lawrence Cunningham
+ Buffet by Roger Lowenstein
+ The Knack by Norm Brodsky
+ Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
+ The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day
+ Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
+ Road to Serfdom by Hayek
+ Iacocca:An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca
starfieldonFeb 15, 2013
QuadrupleAonJune 26, 2019
Such an exciting time for PC games, with ID way out at the forefront - highly recommend the Masters of Doom book mentioned in the article too, it's a deep dive into the making and eventual impact of Doom. Great snapshot of the ID guys and of that time period.
JKCalhounonDec 23, 2018
No likable "characters" in that one. Fun reading about the era though.
lowtoleranceonJan 7, 2020
doublewaffleonJan 5, 2019
2. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Heinlein)
3. Masters of Doom... (D.Kushner)
4. Paycheck (P.Dick)
5. Dealers of Lightning (M.Hiltzik)
billsimpsononJan 27, 2015
Also, I learned by reading it that Carmack and Romero created Commander Keen (somehow I'd never made that connection with their later games). Commander Keen was my Mario. Perhaps it was more than that. It introduced me to shareware, which led me to BBSs, and then the Internet.
incisiononJune 26, 2013
At the time, I recall a number of people who read the book bemoaning 1991 as a bygone era of opportunity, as if all the good ideas and opportunities to invent had been "used up". Interesting how different people take the same text as self-defeating vs inspiring.
Also, on the topic of inspirational books, I always have to mention Skunk Works[0], one of my all-time favorites.
0: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003
davidwonSep 1, 2014
Hah, reminds me of the same thing happening to the ID Software team, as recounted in the Masters of Doom book.
angersockonFeb 11, 2015
Nothing has helped me grow more than actually running a startup a couple of times.
If you're just looking for startup-themed books, I'd honestly suggest Masters of Doom, Dreaming in Code, and Soul of a New Machine.
Lean Startup if you're feeling trendy.
yodsanklaionDec 10, 2013
On a side note, I recommend the book "masters of doom" that that tells the story behind the game.
DarkTreeonSep 2, 2016
Here are some books I'd recommend in the former vein:
1. Elon Musk - as mentioned, awesome, inspiring read
2. Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull's story of Pixar
3. Masters of Doom - Carmack is a boss
4. The Innovators - The people who created the computing world
5. Hackers - The people who created the computing world
6. Steve Jobs - obligatory, whether positive/negative
Fifer82onJuly 6, 2017
aloukissasonDec 29, 2019
- Vagabonding (Potts): made me travel more than ever
- Steve Jobs (Isaacson): amazing life story, beautifully described
- The Mom Test: required reading for any young founder/PM IMO, I've gifted this more than any other book
- It doesn't have to be crazy at work (DHH/Fried): best advice on how to run a company in a sustainable way to maximize team happiness & output
- Masters of Doom: epically entertaining, super nostalgic
mjhoyonApr 9, 2015
wdr1onJune 1, 2018
Barbarians Led by Bill Gates is an older book, but interesting to get a sense of MS was like in earlier times.
Isaacson's Steve Jobs is obviously focused on Job, but gives a good sense of the companies he ran while he was there.
Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is a good view into the Mac specifically.
dosgonlogsonFeb 2, 2017
jtfrenchonMar 28, 2014
I just wouldn't have predicted that their comeback to the limelight would be working for Facebook. In my eyes, they were "bigger" than that (obviously not monetarily). They "meant" more to me. This is all subjective stuff I realize, and yes I've heard a zillion times "how good it is for VR", but it kind of indirectly gives a message that the best thing a genius who is already capable of changing the world can do is work for Facebook instead of do their own thing.
Call me a softy, but something just warms my heart when I see smart people stand out on their own, unswayed by the massive "power monoliths" surrounding them, and STILL kick ass. That's what Facebook did! And that was awesome! I just hope that spirit of entrepreneurship doesn't fade, and that geniuses know their power lies within themselves — not in deep pockets of any company.
Congrats to all involved though — I can only imagine what kind of crazy office days are ahead. The sequel to "Masters of Doom" is yet to be written.
louwrentiusonSep 8, 2018
theatraineonDec 29, 2019
- Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
- Kochland by Christopher Leonard
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
I read a lot of "business consultant" books and began to be annoyed with them since many of them can be summed up by the title and the first couple of chapters.
I like the books above because they presented factual events that allow you to draw your own conclusions.
I especially like Schwarzenegger's book and Bad Blood because of their depth. It was interesting to hear about Schwarzenegger's crazy business ideas like how he became a millionaire before becoming an actor and how he bought a 747.
I found the audiobook "Master's of Doom" (book is 2003 but audiobook is newer) to be really entertaining as it was read by actor Wil Wheaton who did a great job.
corentinonMay 24, 2007
George Broussard and the Duke Nukem team would be great, too (the brilliant guy who wrote the then-ubercool 3D game engine was still a kid at the time!)
By the way: web startups are great but they aren't the only ones. "Founders at work" is a great, great resource but it would have been even greater if it focused a little less on web stuff.
A very brilliant guy is Matt Dillon. Not the actor... well, he certainly is brilliant too ;) The software developer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillon_(computer_scientist)
He started a few startups but he is mostly known as a BSD kernel developer wizard. He started the very innovative DragonflyBSD project (a fork of FreeBSD with impressive goals).
Chuck Moore (inventor of Forth and computer visionary) started/was part of a few startups, too. Lately, he has been with IntellaSys creating an impressive, radically-different microprocessor ("SEAforth").
The story of Bill Joy (BSD, TCP/IP hacker and co-founder of Sun Microsystems) would be cool, too.
The Lisp Machine guys would be great as well (though there already is some info available of the net).
And why not founders in fields not related at all with computers? The founders of Bose, Hobie Cat, etc.
EDIT: yes, there is a lot of superlatives :)
weppleonSep 2, 2016
tehwalrusonAug 7, 2013
(I recently read "masters of doom" after a HN recommendation, so a couple of months ago I'd have been like "what? who?".)
doomlaseronJuly 2, 2019
If you're interested in games / startup stories, I have to recommend Masters of Doom, about the early days of id. It's thrilling and exciting to read: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult... - It's also in the news that USA has ordered a pilot for a TV adaptation. Here's hoping it's good!
pistoriusponAug 12, 2009
I recently read "Masters of Doom." It's the "stories" of John Carmack and John Romero. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it highly.
In the book they describe a "android like hum" that Carmack makes when he talks. I'm wondering if this is the "Iiiiii" noise that he makes in this video.
fabiensanglardonDec 23, 2020
- Masters of Doom
- Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
- Mid Century Modern At Home
- Scandinavian Style at Home
phausonJan 11, 2019
Every story was about something interesting, but they were all pretty shallow. At the end, regardless of the actual outcome, they pretended it was a massive victory where the devs pulled off the impossible. In some cases it was accurate, in other cases the companies were financially successful, but didn't quite capture the magic of previous games.
thecoffmanonJune 26, 2013
The author has a new novel out titled Jacked which I believe tells the story of Rockstar games but I haven't read it yet. Has anyone else? Is it good?
I feel like it would be lacking some of the nostalgia and lure of Masters of Doom. The celebrity and talent of Carmack is legendary in our industry and Romero's arc makes him a compelling foil later in the story. Additionally, id software's games are the games that I grew up playing as opposed to Rockstar's games which I have only seen in passing.
bornhuetteronJune 15, 2013
Yes! I listened to the audiobook version of this which was read by Wil Wheaton, great stuff.
Thanks for the other suggestions - I'm going to start with Drive as I liked Daniel Pink's latest book but haven't read Drive yet.
I like conversational style, and 5 hours is a good length for a book - I hate it when a 5 hour book gets dragged out to 10.
markpapadakisonAug 8, 2016
I read it every few months, and I have gifted it to family and friends, and most of them loved it as well.
It’s not the writing, nor the story per se that stand out, it’s not just about how it beautiful highlights and highs and the lows of the Johns’s symbiotic relationship and their accomplishments, it’s not even about how their skills, strengths and weaknesses play into their success and failures (which I am sure is typical of most co-founders stories).
It’s about empowering the reader to believe that everything’s possible, and how smart, hard-working people can build technologies that affect the lives of many.
This book works wonders for when I am going through burn-outs, or I am not motivated enough to pursue a problem or a project.
When I am done reading the book, I am excited and eager to get back into the game. I can’t recommend it enough.
ericdonFeb 7, 2015
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm sure they published it later via a variety of publishers, but they made a ton off of the shareware version. Masters of Doom is a fantastic read, if you haven't read it.
JugurthaonNov 14, 2020
- How to Build a Startup (Steve Blank on Udacity)
- CS183/Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
- CS184: Startup Engineering (Balaji S. Srinivasan)
Best:
Pando Monthly: interviews by Sarah Lacy with founders and VCs. Many go for two or three hours. She goes beyond the PR story and touches on details, doubts, decisions.
This Week in Startups: interviews by Jason Calacanis. You'll learn things that are not in the PR story. Check out the Uber interview with Travis Kalanick for some gore inceptions details..
- Founders at Work (book by Jessica Livingston)
- any book you find by someone who's done it before. VCs, founders, etc. Relevant books can be Jordan Mechner's book about Prince of Persia, Eric Schmidt about Google, Masters of Doom. These contain gems about crucial moments and how people went about doing things, building product, distribution, relations. Peeking behind the curtain.
WAonJune 23, 2016
blubonFeb 27, 2011
dontstealmynameonNov 15, 2012
The greatest show on Earth - Richard Dawkins was an excellent read.
Surely you're joking Mr Feynman by Richard p.Feynman was terrific read by a very small bit can considerred offensive or at the least dated in its outlook but if you can get past that its great!
I recently finished a book on ID called "Masters of doom" by David Kushner which I rather enjoyed as well.
I also love reading about crackers from the (mostly) 80's and I can recommend.
Cuckoo Egg by Cliff Stoll
Masters of deception
We are anonymous - Inside the hacker world of lulzsec, anonymous and the global cyber insurgency by Parmy Olson
I loved "Underground Hacking Madness and the obsession on the electronic frontier" once I got past the first 2 or 3 chapters (also it was researched by Julian Assange before wikileak and has a chapter about his hacking) An Ebook copy can be found on the authors website http://www.underground-book.net/download.php3
Ghost in the wire Kevin Mitnick
HansionNov 22, 2013
Actually according to the book Masters of Doom he's been that since the beginning of iD and not just these days.
It also gives the perception that he's always been more about pushing gaming technology (or just general technology) rather than being in it for the gaming itself.
hydandataonMar 27, 2020
Sunburst and Luminary: an Apollo Memoir
https://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html
The Brain Makers
https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Makers-HP-Newquist/dp/067230412...
Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence
https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Computing-Machine-Intellige...
The Soul of a New Machine
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine/dp/B01FCTJCR0
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-An...
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/B00AQU7...
Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...
Not a dedicated history book, but Hamming talks a lot about personal experiences and observations
UNIX: A History and a Memoir
https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-Kernighan-e...
Masters of Doom
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult... linking to audiobook because it is read by Wil Wheaton :)
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/...
It might be just me, but I really enjoy reading biographies of people important to the science, for example here is one for John Tukey https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.2003...
enitihasonJan 5, 2020
I don't think you really need to learn anything special for job interviews. There is no necessity to understand special technologies, as most good companies are fine as long as you have any experience with similar things.
I would also recommend you read books on programmers. I recently read "Masters of Doom", and it might open your eyes into goal driven programmers and their impact on the world.
Also, out of curiosity, which companies do you think have a higher hiring bar than Google?
acdangeronDec 10, 2018
I don't know if they've reconciled in recent years and I've never heard about Romero working at a gas station. Any source for that?
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
fatlineonSep 8, 2017
PeterisonSep 16, 2018
First, you should ask yourself - what kind of engineer do you want to be. Why are you building?
Then, read about the people who became the best and their early days. What did they do when they were in your position? Did they study a set of topics or did they pursue their passions? Taking and highly-weighing advice from people not at the top of the field could be very detrimental to your development as an engineer.
From reading books like: Coders at work, Masters of Doom, Making of Karateka, you will realize that the best engineers were driven by their ideas and projects very early on. They ended up learning to make things happen. But don't take my word for it, find these people, study their stories and pick the path you would enjoy the most.
This approach will not just make you a strong career engineer, but could turn you into one of the greats - the people that get to push the field forward.
msturbersofdonJune 20, 2020
brianzeliponDec 10, 2013
The book was a really good and quick read. One point I'll make about its content was how it told of Carmack reading Steve Levey's _Hackers_ (1984) and thought that's where he belonged. I was happy to learn about his alignment with free software.
Wolfenstein 3d was my first non-console game. I enjoyed it tremendously, as with Doom and Hexen. I'm currently a COD addict.
The term "deathmatch" was an insight of Romero's upon experiencing the beginning of multiplayer. That was also nice to find out, that deathmatch came from Doom. It has totally stuck since, as team deathmatch is considered the default game type in COD.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6570439
chrisherdonDec 12, 2018
- Apex [Nexus 3] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Factfulness (Awesome, most important book I read this year)
- Prisoners of Geography (why nations act the way they do)
- Crux [Nexus 2] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Debt: the first 5000 years (slog to get through but interesting)
- Nexus [Nexus 1] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Digitocracy (super short story, super powerful message)
- Artemis (Not as good as the martian)
- Before Mars (Starts out great, fizzles out)
- Down and Out in Magic Kingdom (How reputation based social currency might pan out)
- Blood Sweat and Pixels (How games are really made)
- Masters of Doom (Awesome story of how the game was made and what it led to)
- Foundation [Foundation 1] (Prescient with where the world is, what might happen in reality)
- Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that can't... (Ok, not great, read it on blinkist)
- Ender's Game (Under rated, most fun I had reading this year, I know...)
- Neuromancer (classic, must read)
- Pre-suation (interesting and worth reading if starting a consumer facing business)
- The Three-Body Problem (Found it tedious, honestly. Interesting though)
- Radical Candour (A lot of common sense advice we take for granted and could do better with)
- Seveneves (Longggggg, but really worth it. Shame about the ending)
- The Virgin Banker (Really good read, how a bank came into being)
- Why information grows (Great read, could of been half the length, would recommend)
- Babylon Revisited (Meh)
- Money: the Unauthorised Biography (Simplistic history of money before and after coin. Good)
- Hellbent (Enjoyed it, good for a holiday read)
- Snow Crash (Classic, Awesome, read it)
- The little prince (must read)
- To Pixar and Beyond (A different viewpoint on Jobs)
robodaleonDec 11, 2018
facepalmonAug 9, 2014
Otherland - Tad Williams
Ready Player One
Daemon - David Suarez
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Shadowrun - ?? there are lots of possibly varying quality, I only read the ones by Nigel Findley which I liked
Snowcrash - Stephenson
Reamde - Stephenson
Der falsche Spiegel - Sergej Lukianenko (not sure about the english name)
Masters of Doom - Story of ID developing the games Doom and Quake - not really a VR story, but it sets the mood.
Pollen - Jeff Noon
Bruce Sterling is great, too, but I don't remember which of his stories are about virtual reality.
I suppose Ian Bank's "The Culture" novels might be a candidate, but I haven't read them yet.
JugurthaonSep 1, 2020
What do you think of "The Sims Game Design Documents"[1]? Could you recommend other similar resources?
I guess what really strikes a chord with me is the arc, not only "in" the game, but of the journey to make the game. One book I enjoyed on an emotional level was "The Making of Prince of Persia"[2] by Jordan Mechner. I also enjoyed "Masters of Doom"[3] by David Kushner, but more on the merit of good research, which I really respect. I don't want a montage, I want the story with the suffering and tribulations.
Do you know of similar content?
[0]: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/
[1]: https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985-19...
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
ianremsenonAug 21, 2015
Programmers these days stand on the shoulders of giants, most of them still living and breathing. And it is a priceless gift that it is so much easier to learn this craft when you're starting out.
It is a huge mistake to be the smartest person in a room, so I seek out people who floor me, people who are good at what I want to be good at. The Internet, built by our heroes, allow us young programmers to talk to our heroes as if they were people, and I suppose that helps us to discover that that's all they are.
Edit: If you enjoyed this, another personal-story-tinged entertaining-but-technical diamond I can recommend is a book about id Software, Masters of Doom.
___altonDec 11, 2018
openfutureonSep 19, 2019
ssamulionMay 25, 2019
Not sure what is the right mix, but some of the most motivating reads for me were:
- Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
- iWoz
- The Soul of a New Machine
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
- The Mighty Micro: Impact of the Computer Revolution
- Accidental Empires
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
efiechoonJan 7, 2020
Masters of Doom is probably the best book I have ever consumed. It was extremely motivating, the description of everything made me wish I could go back in time and be there so badly.
Think of having a goal you are so passionate about reaching, that you don't care about food, baths or anything else, you just want to work on this 20 hours a day. Must have been amazing.
Myself, I definitely will have a look at the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom "Game Engine Black Book" by Fabien Sanglard.
JackpotDenonSep 28, 2012
someonehereonDec 15, 2019
WorldMakeronJune 22, 2020
(Jimmy Maher also is pretty good about citing sources and the book Masters of DOOM is cited several times as a primary source, which is also why it is recommended several times in sibling comments.)
paulz_onApr 11, 2021
As for the long term - my hope is that it gets better as the headsets get better. It seems to so far.
One sort of interesting thing along these lines - I remember in the book "Masters of Doom" they're describing the early days of FPS development and how people would frequently get very nautious and grab the trash can by their desk to vomit.
You never hear about that anymore. What is that? Better screens? Playing games when you're a kid? Whatever is at work there, seems like it might apply to vr too.
stuxnet79onMar 2, 2018
If you ask me John Romero made Eidos his b*h, not his fans!
InsanityonDec 23, 2018
* Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Steven Levy)
* Masters of DOOM (David Kushner)
* The simpsons and their mathematical secrets (Simon Singh)
* Countdown to zero day (about stuxnet, by Kim Zetter)
* Sapiens: A brief history of human kind (Yuval Noah Harari)
* Coders at work (Some interviews, not all, but I enjoyed it. By Peter Seibel)
mrspeakeronMay 18, 2020
I'd recommend Fabien Sanglards's Wolfenstein and Doom books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/). These go into WAY TOO MUCH technical info (in a great way!), but don't cover any of the hilarious rock-star antics.
My secret wish is someone would re-write Masters Of Doom to be 25% more Game Engine Black Book, and fix up some of the prose!
maceonDec 3, 2009
Carmack would go on 'research getaways' to hack on the Quake 3 engine. He did this because, at the time, the id office was not conducive to his work style. "Trinity" was the codename for the Quake 3 engine.
Minor49eronMar 27, 2020
"The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" was eye opening for me regarding the life of Jobs, his family life, and his business involvements.
"Masters of Doom" by David Kushner chronicles the history of id Software and its creators. It's an entertaining book for sure, especially the part where id has Gwar show up at Microsoft.
"Close to the Machine" by Ellen Ullman is the memoir of a software developer in the 80s. I need to read this one again, but it was enjoyable. I think about one part in particular from time to time where the author recounts being offered a job to work on an aging mainframe. The man pitching the job is probably the last person around who's dedicated to maintaining it. She would have made a lot of money doing it, but the work itself looked to be soul draining, so she skipped it fpr pther opportunities
"The Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman documents the story of Kevin Mitnick, the so-called most wanted hacker alive. Certainly has some surprises and is a fun read.
Pretty much anything by Norbert Wiener regarding cybernetics is interesting from a historical perspective. I've read several but the one that comes to mind immediately is "God and Golem, Inc". While unfinished, it goes into cybernetics, which was a practice or idea that technology could interface with biological life in a complementary way and those ways should be pursued. I think he was ultimately successful since we take a lot of those ideas for granted today.
"The Computer and The Brain" by John von Neumann is a great and short read. It mostly talks about how binary signals can be fired by synapses in the brain.
CSMastermindonDec 25, 2018
Can I recommend the audiobook? For what it's worth I found Masters of DOOM to be great. Mostly because the writing style _really_ does a good job of communicating the personalities of the people involved. I'm not a video game guy, in fact I've never played DOOM, but I still enjoyed it start to finish.
AugusteonOct 12, 2012
[1] http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tag/warcraft
[2] http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tag/starcraft
azmentheonDec 10, 2013
iqsteronFeb 10, 2011
I've always dreamed of working with experts of such caliber in a startup. It seems luck (being in the right place at the right time) is important as is a prepared mind (jumping at the right opportunity from the sea that life presents you with).
I have three great book suggestions for people interested in the history behind video games:
1) Masters of Doom
2) Game Over
3) Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution
JugurthaonMar 31, 2018
-----
Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but I really liked:
- The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
- Masters of Doom - David Kushner.
- Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston (aggregate of stories)
Pretty cool in different ways:
- The first shows how the author documented a good chunk of the process (like solving the problem of the Prince's alter ego).
- The second by the journalistic work the author went through and access he had.
- The third by the context it gives on many things (for example, you get a glimpse on Palantir's current work by looking into Paypal's history and the work Max Levchin, CTO at the time, and his team did on fraud detection, or Hotmail's growth tactics).
ryneandalonJune 22, 2020
There are some great reads out there about gamedev and gaming history, though:
- Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner
- The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent was required reading for me in college
- Game Over by David Sheff
- Dungeon Hacks by David Craddock
jeffoolonOct 15, 2011
Sure, some abstract painting is great. Tetris is as well. But that's not the norm.
As for Carmack, we all know he's the tech guy and great at it. What's important is how the tools he creates are used. I've not played Rage yet, but I hear it's mediocre. I'm not brokenhearted over that.
What does hit me though, is QuakeLive.com's irrelevance in id's/Bethesda's planning. I'd love to see them first add a second game with worthwhile teamplay to compete with Team Fortress 2 (which is something id/B should've been ahead of.)
Secondly they need to provide a strong modding API and let players rent servers to host their mods on, and even let players run ads or charge for access if they want. Become the platform.
Finally, since I now realize I'm just writing a long id wishlist, I want the original team back for one more romp... I want them to be leads for Bethesda in relaunching Quake. Only this time, do it as an open world FPSRPG a la Fallout/Morrowind. Base it off of the old pen and paper rpg sessions that they all used to play that Carmack DMed, and Romero destroyed when he took the Diakatana from a demon. (All wonderfully discussed in the Masters of Doom book.)
... God this post got a little crazy.
codesushi42onJuly 11, 2019
I would like it to be true that solo founders have just as much chance of success. I have been unable to find a cofounder for years, and I am not biased against solo companies. People are unpredictable, and even wildly successful companies have some disheartening back stories. I've learned that from books like Idea Man (Microsoft) and Masters of Doom (id Software) where founding members got screwed by morally challenged cofounders. In the case of id, Tom Hall received nothing from id in the end, and forfeited all of his equity when he was fired. Because they decided he wasn't needed anymore, despite him being there from the beginning through the tough times.
But it stands to reason that you are better off if you can find someone who is honest and is going to work hard with you, simply because two heads are better than one. When used together at least. Emphasis on honest, I would rank trust and ethics over experience and intelligence.
If you can't find that person, and you are determined, then may as well go ahead and go it alone. You only live once. Just realize the odds are stacked even higher against you. You are only lying to yourself if you refuse to accept that truth.
And you can be a cofounder of a successful company, but still fail miserably and have it all taken away by a bad cofounder.
silicon2401onDec 18, 2020
For any fan of Carmack, Doom (the game), or just video games in general, I recommend reading "Masters of Doom". Carmack's story honestly reads like a programming/general nerd rockstar in the book, and it's a lot of fun. Also helps me understand what kind of personality it takes to be considered one of the best ever at something: for much of his early life, Carmack was essentially awake just to program. His home was basically a mattress and a computer at one point, IIRC.
DanAndersenonMay 12, 2015
These sorts of lines, constantly repeated, irked me, not because they weren't technically true or anything, but because it's such a "looking-backward" point of view. At the time, that's not how people saw it. It was all about pushing forward the state of the art, and we miss something when we look back on it in that way.
I guess in a similar way I've had the same feeling about "modern" pixel art, where it often seems to miss the point. By treating it as just an art style, it turns it from an exercise in conveying a vision despite limitations, into an effort to simplify and downsample because those are the most easily-recognized surface-level hallmarks of that period.
For me, the magic of that era comes from seeing techniques like color cycling ( http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=0 ), where the desire to get a certain effect led to interesting workarounds, rather than being satisfied with limitations because it's "retro."
rhblakeonJune 29, 2017
> Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web ol problems and solutions, imagination and code. He kept nothing from the past–no pictures, no records, no games, no computer disks. He didn’t even save copies of his first games, Wraith and Shadowforge. There was no yearbook to remind of his time at school, no magazine copies of his early publications. He kept nothing but what he needed at the time. His bedroom consisted of a lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and a stack of books. There was no mattress. All he brought with him from home was a cat named Mitzi (a gift from his stepfamily) with a mean streak and a reckless bladder.
Eleven years later, in Time in 2001, commenting on the infamous split with John Romero:
> John Carmack doesn't disagree with Romero's description of their clashing priorities. "I'm doing what I want to do now, and it happens to be making us millions of dollars," he told TIME last week, in one of his first public comments on the split with his former partner. Carmack doesn't want to grow id into a big company. "There's only so many Ferraris I want to own," he says. But he takes issue with Romero's version of their breakup. "John's a good designer, and he's got artistic talent. But the fact is that after he got rich and famous, the push to work just wasn't there anymore." Romero didn't quit last fall, says Carmack. "He was handed his resignation." [0]
[0] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,137916,...
alxmdevonFeb 19, 2015
ArjunaonNov 22, 2013
I can see my copy of Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition sitting here, which was such a treat to read when it came out, because it has so many great chapters on the development of Quake and little stories about John's discoveries and thought processes throughout the development of the game.
But, then I thought... wait... this is a new beginning. I wrote about this previously, but, look for gaming to start heading in the direction of VR with technology like Oculus Rift. Also, with someone of the caliber of John Carmack involved (now totally focused on it because of the resignation announcement) with not only his passion and skill, but his ability to work with graphics hardware manufacturers and driver developers to effect change and garner the necessary support and backing, expect to see vibrant, compelling developments in this field.
In case you missed it, check this video out of John discussing some of his VR work. It is from E3 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg
That momentary sinking feeling has faded away now... great things are ahead!
facepalmonApr 21, 2014
I'd be excited to work in that area, but I have no idea how to go about it in a sensible way. I mean how could I contribute as a single individual, without having a company on my hands?
alawrenceonDec 22, 2016
Deep Work - Cal Newport (recommended)
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert (recommended)
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals - Heidi Grant-Halvorson (lots of great stuff in here, highly recommended)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley (I really like biographies and Malcolm X was a pretty interesting person. recommended)
Making It in Real Estate: Starting Out as a Developer - John McNellis (meh)
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (I'm not big on sci-fi, so this book surprised me with how good it was. recommended)
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl (I'm not sure how much I got out of it, but worth it just for learning about Frankl's unique experiences and perspectives. recommended)
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (meh)
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner (One of those books that makes you want to lock yourself in a room and program for hours. Carmack's dedication and intellect is especially awe-inspiring. recommended)
SmellyGeekBoyonOct 1, 2015
I agree, there's definitely this romanticised image of game development in the developer community. It's something I always aspired to get into but the sacrifices don't seem to be worth the rewards, at least in my case.
backslash_16onJuly 2, 2019
If you grew up playing Doom, and all the other shareware games like Hexen, Heretic, etc... reading about Id Software's start and history is more interesting than I ever thought it would be.
Another book that drew me in was "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels". It's a collection of short-ish game creation stories packaged into a book. Really candid interviews and writing.
ibrowonOct 24, 2013
From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting as the Masters of Doom, but still a very interesting little read.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Prince-Persia-Journals/dp/1...
Edit. Oh yes, just remembered. For a real trip down memory lane you might want to check out Speccy Nation[2] too. It took me about an hour to flick through but it was so much fun, afterwards I had to call up my best friend from the time (another ZX Spectrum addict) and tell him to buy a copy!
[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speccy-Nation-ebook/dp/B0096BFBSA
indescions_2018onJan 10, 2018
Regarding the Haskell love. I believe Unreal contributed to the design of a research functional programming language prototype called Cayenne back in the day:
Cayenne—a language with dependent types
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=289451
I think another historical note is how everybody developed on SGI machines in the late 1990s. Primarily, due to Maya modeling. But the 3D graphics API wars were certainly a factor:
Direct 3D and OpenGL by Paul Hsieh
http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/windoze/OpenGLvsDirect3D.html
And, yeah, MSDOS ZZT from 1991 is still playable via Internet Archive ;)
https://archive.org/details/msdos_ZZT_1991
icelanceronSep 28, 2017
I guess. I assume you've read Masters of Doom and other relatively factual accounts of their history? It's not exactly the most reasonable behavior, and you can get that kind of death march abuse on any sort of game development team today.
We owe Carmack a lot. Doesn't make working for him some sort of pleasurable experience. Most innovators are like this.
dmschulmanonJune 13, 2018
http://www.shacknews.com/article/101156/rocket-jump-quake-an...
I grew up in this era so I'm certainly enamored by the nostalgia trip but I have a lot of respect for the team at id, it's fascinating to read about all of the mundane aspects of ray tracing and compressing color palettes enough such that a game like Doom or Quake could actually work. id probably did more than any other company at the time to make programming seem like an alternative subculture instead of a science and to make games these dark and moody experiences that were a blast to play (especially with friends via LAN).
WalterBrightonAug 1, 2017
I graduated in 1979 with a whole class of people who were quite capable of doing what Gates and Jobs did, and that's just from one university. But we didn't, and Gates/Jobs did. How do you explain that?
My father was career military. That isn't a recipe for wealth, and is an avenue available to millions of people.
You might be interested in the book "Masters of Doom" about John Carmack and John Romero. They had none of the privileges you assert, and yet vaulted to the top of the gaming industry.
JachonDec 23, 2015
Might count, might not, since it finished in March but was going on before. I loved Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky - http://hpmor.com/
Loved Masters of Doom - David Kushner
I liked Worm - Wildbow - https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ -- but it falls short of overall greatness and I don't think it's worth its 22-average-books length if I were to go back in time and decide on rereading...
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I) - Janice Kim -- I've been learning Go and thought this book was particularly excellent for beginners.
There are at least 4 other books I'm close to finishing and I might get one done before the end of the month... Volume 2 of the above Go series, Mythical Man-Month, A handbook of traditional living, or The Waking Dream.
ecoonJan 26, 2016
Masters of Doom is a great book though. I read it a couple years back. I recommend picking up a copy if the audiobook isn't working out.
fossuseronMar 28, 2020
Charles is great at explaining how computers actually work with circuit diagrams from the ground up in a way that's articulate, clear, and engaging. I think I learned more from this book than I did in my CS architecture class.
The historical context he puts it in helps with clarity since it's easier to understand when you know how each successive step built on the previous one.
In addition to the Dream Machine, I'd also mention Steven Levy's Hackers as an obvious one to read.
Some others I've read:
- What the dormouse said (this one was just okay, but interesting to see some of the cultural context at the time).
- Crypto (about the history of cryptography). I really liked this one, but people I've recommended it to found it dry.
- In the Plex (history of Google)
- Masters of Doom (John Carmack, John Romero and Id Software)
Related Fiction:
- Microserfs
- The Soul of a New Machine
- The Phoenix Project (fiction paired with the Dev Ops Handbook)
euccastroonMay 24, 2007
I'm not looking forward to Molyneux, though.
playing_coloursonMay 17, 2021
Let me also address psychological aspects. You are much more than a university certificate, you are not defined by it. You can self-educate yourself on a lot of technical and non-technical topics, you can have interesting hobbies, create, challenge yourself physically. There are potentially so much more to do to help you succeed in relationships.
Do not build barriers that cause anxiety, do not dream how much better your would be if you had a fancy degree - you live once, accept yourself, and invest in yourself in what you really want.
I totally understand you btw, I have a non-CS degree from a no-name university in a small post-Soviet country. You can imagine that I felt a bit insecure about it as well. 5 years on, I stopped worrying about it, when realised that my employers and people around me in general judged me by my current contributions and character.
In IT, we basically only need to dedicate focus and time to improve ourselves. No barriers like expensive equipment or official accreditation. Also, maybe, read Masters of Doom, a book about John Carmack for inspiration.
whatyoucantsayonMar 15, 2018
Have you read Masters of Doom or even Googled the question?
http://bfy.tw/H8Z5
dilemmaonOct 10, 2016
soylentcolaonFeb 11, 2015
I'd imagine the same thing goes for films as well. Start with an incredibly ambitious concept only to find that you need to hype the hell out of it in order to get the necessary investment. But then with outside investment comes the requirement that the finished product be released within a certain timeframe and meet certain expectations in terms of profits generated. It's no wonder that for all of the talented and dedicated artists out there (in games or film), the majority of what gets released is either disappointing, unoriginal, or at best, pretty damn good...but rarely mindblowing or something that elevates the entire state of the art.
MrBuddyCasinoonDec 18, 2020
This whole kind of advice is not very useful in practise. Copying a recipe for success from a person that is wildly different in personality than you will not lead to the same outcomes.
If you've read Masters of Doom, it is evident that Carmack is not neuro-typical. Few people have the ability to concentrate like him. There is no point trying to become like him, this will only make you miserable. Don't fall for post-hoc rationalisation: he naturally gravitated towards it and became successful. 200 years ago he might have been a scholarly monk, or a watchmaker tinkering.
You have to choose your own path. Doesn't mean you cannot learn from the mistakes of others, but this will probably be about how and less about what.
FamicomanonMay 15, 2018
Something similar but perhaps a bit drier may be Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely about the personal computer wars. And yes, that's the same Cringely from the Triumph of the Nerds documentaries.
I also do not recommend David Kushner's Prepare to Meet Thy Doom and The World's Most Dangerous Geek audiobooks which I believe are anthologies of loosely related articles he has written over the years. The prose was a little too purple for me.
maxharrisonMay 13, 2013
If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books).
Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy.
Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order):
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson
What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
lackbeardonSep 2, 2017
Fooled By Randomness - a) Survivorship bias. b) If you look at revealed preferences, people choose regular small gains with a rare huge loss over regular small losses and a rare huge gain even though that choice is -ev. c) Much more!
Hackers and Painters - One of the most insightful, subversive, and surprising texts out there.
C Interfaces and Implementations - Great examples of good API design and how to build clean modular code.
The Paleo Manifesto - Explains how the origin of religion was probably as a set of models for coping with the transition from hunting/gathering to civilized agriculture. The part of the book where he points out that the story of the fall of man in the Bible is probably the story of this transition is super interesting.
The Game - Made me realize that the narrative told by boomer and gen-x parents about how to attract a woman is probably doing young men (and women) more harm than good. I would not try to treat this as a how-to manual, though. A fun yarn.
Starting Strength - After years of fumbling around in the gym this cut through a lot of bad ideas about fitness, exercise, strength, and health. It lead to the first real (and lasting) progress I've ever made physically.
Understanding Comics - Understanding art and visual communication.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Up there with Hackers & Painters in its rate of insight & surprise per page.
Fail Safe Investing - Thought provoking ideas about why we invest and how best to go about doing that. (The ideas stand up, IMO, but some of the concrete advice on how to implement those ideas is very dated.)
Good Calories, Bad Calories - It turns out that even scientists can be dishonest and corrupted by politics.
tjeerdnetonDec 10, 2013
The main ingredients which imho make Doom classic:
- creepy/spacey/metal Adlib music, thanks to Bobby Prince (Adlib was good for that)
- simple, but effective spooky samples playing at random locations
- for the time good textures (need some good graphics artists) to give it a dark feeling
- kiss play experience (see how it probably would be done nowadays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw )
- VGA-graphics, I keep saying this to people: VGA is pixely, but somehow I don't see that when playing Doom, I compare it with cartoon drawings, you don't focus on the details, but how it looks globally and use a bit of fantasy to bring it to life - nowadays graphics are so detailed that I somehow get distracted by too much detail, it's becoming too realistic almost and doesn't look like a 'game' anymore
- deathmatch or coop via modem, calling your friend to play a match via the telephone line, warning your parents that they are not allowed to pick up the phone, playing not too long because you had to pay per minute (in The Netherlands at least)
- everything packed in a few diskettes (3 or 4?) was at that time almost magic that you could have such a 3d world fitting on it
There are many more reasons why for me Doom will always have a good reputation for me, mostly because of a combination of properties which came together at that time.
shaunpudonNov 13, 2017
adventuredonSep 4, 2018
Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw. Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.
guiambrosonJan 7, 2020
>> Classic computer history:
- "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", Steven Levy
- "The Innovators", Walter Isaacson
- "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley", Adam Fisher [innovative format, tons of interesting tidbits after you get used to the style. Read only after the other two above]
- "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story", Michael Lewis
- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", Alan Deutschman
- "Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", Andy Hertzfeld
- "Masters of Doom", David Kushner
- "Idea Man", Paul Allen
- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", Katie Hafner
>> Entertaining stories, but less historical value:
- "Ghost in the Wires", Kevin Mitnick
- "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley", Antonio Garcia Martinez
- "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal", Nick Bilton
>> On my to-read queue:
- "How the Internet Happened", Brian McCullough [just started; very promising]
- "Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age", Leslie Berlin
- "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of WWII", Liza Mundy
- "Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer", Paul Freiberger / Michael Swaine
>> Others worth mentioning (but just read a few chapters):
- "The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray", Charles Murray [about Cray Computers]
- "Racing the Beam" [about Atari]
- "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" [about Commodore]
>> Bonus:
- "Art of Atari", Tim Lapetino [great as a coffee table book, particularly if you grew up in the 80's :) ]
nosignalonNov 3, 2011
I don't know C so I can't, let alone appreciate, the source he's released to judge for myself.
Thanks for sharing.
michaelx386onMar 12, 2015
[0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007434855
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749924896
thecoffmanonDec 6, 2010
It'd been on my list for quite awhile but I just got around to it a few months ago. It was fascinating to read about all the games I'd played growing up. For those who haven't read it - it covers pretty much the birth of the gaming industry as we know it today not just Doom. It goes all the way back to when Romero was writing games and sending them in to magazines to be included on disks. Carmack has always been an icon for me so it was interesting to read about him on a more personal level.
In addition to the interest factor - it was also quite inspiring to me. It certainly increased my drive to get stuff done. If the early history of PC gaming interests you at all; or you just want to read a page turner of a book about people not that dissimilar from you I'd highly recommend it.
eswatonApr 23, 2015
angersockonJune 26, 2013
It's the ultimate bootstrap and find market fit and make bank story you'll likely ever read.
~
Later, you should also read Soul of a New Machine and Dreaming in Code for a less calvinball approach to software development.
riffraffonApr 7, 2017
Standing on the bus, running, kneading dough, ok.
Listening to a book and trying to code, no chance.
I disagree on what kind work best, for me "divulgation-level" non-fiction is the one. Think Malcolm Gladwell.
Actual fiction can be complex because it requires attention on who is talking, where they are, whether you're in a time skip or flashbacks etc. Divulgation doesn't.
For example, I've recently listened to The World Until Yesterday[0] and Masters of Doom[1].
They are both reasonably light, they tend to hit the same concepts over and over, there are few "characters", and generally missing 30 seconds of narration has close to zero impact.
But also, I'm fairly sure reading skills is what counts the most. I'm not even sure it's a matter of "being best" as it is a matter of a reader just sounding better for a specific person.
[0] http://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-World-until-Yesterday-...
[1] http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Masters-of-Doom-Audio...
claudiulodroonDec 6, 2018
Does this book have anything "actionable" or is it more an historical overview of the Wolfenstein engine? Will I have the knowledge to implement a similar engine afterwards? (Probably will get it either way, though)
chollida1onNov 18, 2012
Not really true at all, as has been pointed out by other posters.
In the book "masters of doom" they relate that even though Id software had 4 founders when it came time for them to get key man insurance the only person they got it on was John Carmack.
I'd think that most companies are like this. There may be multiple co-founders but there is usually one signifcant one, who if they quit, would sink the company very quickly.
myth_busteronJan 27, 2015
Incidentally, Hackers was what I read after I read Masters of Doom. Here's a quote from Masters of Doom:
"
Overnight, it seemed, Carmack was in a strange house, with a strange family and going to a strange school, a junior high with no gifted program or computer’s. He’d never felt so alone. Then one day he realized he wasn’t. The book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was a revelation.
"
Edit:
Donald Knuth heartily recommends it too[1].
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar...
[1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/retd.html
jagregoryonAug 1, 2017
This was a labor of love/appreciation for me a couple of years ago over a Christmas break. I went through a retro gamedev period during that break, read a few books like Masters of Doom, and found myself trying to read through the various (relatively poor quality) electronic copies of the Black Book that were floating around. Yak shaving being what it is, I spent most of my Christmas break scraping and cleaning up a few different copies to put this together so I could (more comfortably) read it on my Kindle.
FWIW, these conversions were done with an eye for preserving an interesting piece of gaming/graphics programming history, and aren't really intended to be relevant today.
I also converted the Zen of Assembly Language also by Abrash[1], but it's considerably less relevant than the Black Book in general.
[1] https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm
nameloswonApr 13, 2021
Rich people with supportive networks of course can pursuit their goals easier.
Occasionally people from not very good families can do this as well because they're so screwed by the environment and tried to get rid of everything in (the book 'Masters of DOOM' is an example assuming it doesn't try to be too dramatic).
It's much harder to do the same as middle classes with a lot of life obligations, distractions, and most importantly they are by default need to follow linear career developments - it's much harder to be adventurous to had drastic improvement compared to previous categories.
ArjunaonJune 26, 2013
Here are some excerpts from the book that I particularly enjoyed:
"On a cold winter day, Carmack laced up his shoes, slipped on his jacket, and headed out into the Madison snow. The town was blanketed in the stuff, cars caked in frost, trees dangling ice. Carmack endured the chill because he had no car; he'd sold the MGB long before. It was easy enough for him to shut out the weather, just like he could, when necessary, shut Tom and Romero's antics out of his mind. He was on a mission.
Carmack stepped into the local bank and requested a cashier's check for $11,000. The money was for a NeXT computer, the latest machine from Steve Jobs, cocreator of Apple. The NeXT, a stealth black cube, surpassed the promise of Jobs's earlier machines by incorporating NeXTSTEP, a powerful system tailor-made for custom software development. The market for PCs and games was exploding, and this was the perfect tool to create more dynamic titles for the increasingly viable gaming platform. It was the ultimate Christmas present for the ultimate in young graphics programmers, Carmack."
Of course, the book wouldn't be complete without Ferrari details and discussion:
"At a showroom, they admired a gleaming new Testarossa that listed at $90,000. Carmack was treating cars like he treated his games; he had already grown somewhat tired of his current engine. What he really wanted was one of these. [...] Carmack paid cash for a red one to match his 328.
[...]
But Carmack's Ferrari didn't stay in the lot for long. Within days he drove it over to Norwood Autocraft and started on the modifications - he wanted to get the car, which ran at four hundred horsepower, at least twice as strong. Bob Norwood, who had become Carmack's automotive mentor, had a master plan: to install a twin turbo system that would not just double but triple the car's horsepower. For added energy, they put in a computer-controlled device that would inject a burst of nitrous oxide."
reidraconMay 16, 2021
The author explains how he made the R-Type conversion for the ZX Spectrum 48k and provides an interesting view of the "bedroom coders" and the early video game industry in the UK back in the 80s.
Self-published and downloadable for free here: http://bizzley.com/
hobo_markonJan 29, 2015
Terrible user experience for sure, but under what taxation would this fall?
I have read 'masters of doom' last night and I can't believe we used to ship around 'installation disks wrapped in ziploc bags', but maybe it's time to get back to that? j/k
unmoleonDec 23, 2018
Thinking, Fast and Slow: Really should have been subtitled The Ludic Fallacy Run Amok. Filled with grand generalisations based on dubious conclusions from small under-powered behavioural experiments. Read if you want further evidence that Behavioural Economics, that bastard child of psychology is an edifice built on bullshit.
Masters of DOOM: A homage from a fanboy meant for other fanboys. It definitely has its bits of brilliance but it is still a chore to finish.
The Inner Game of Tennis: At 161 pages it might seem short but is in fact 160 pages too long. I bought it after someone on HN said its advice wasn't really about tennis but about life. I wonder what that person was smoking at the time.
port6667onOct 1, 2015
I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom)
They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular game which made them all rich.
I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry. I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on and on how much he had to work and wasn't compensated for it, etc.
pfarrellonApr 18, 2020
Soul of a new machine, previously mentioned. Where I first learned about mushroom management.
Just for Fun: the story of an accidental revolutionary [0] was fun bio on Torvalds from 2001
The Mythical Man Month [1] offers some insight into the management and thinking that went into OS/360
Masters of Doom [2]: offers an enjoyable history of the shareware years and the rise of id software
The multicians site [3]: is a collaborative history of Multics, one the most influential operating systems.
The Mother of All Demos [4]: even better than Steve Jobs keynotes
Steve Jobs iPhone introduction [5]: I’m not a huge fan of Mr Jobs, but this is one of the best presentations ever. It’s not history, per se, but very interesting through our eyes.
0: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160171.Just_for_Fun
1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13629.The_Mythical_Man_M...
2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom
3: https://multicians.org/
4: https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY
5: https://youtu.be/vN4U5FqrOdQ
j_sonJune 29, 2017
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/hackers-gamers-geeks-audi...
corysamaonJan 10, 2017
busterarmonMay 14, 2018
From my memory of reading Masters of Doom, they developed for where they expected the consumer PC hardware market to be at the time of release. If you wanted that hardware at the time they were developing, $10k Next workstations were your best bet.
When Doom came out, I (and most other folks) needed a new PC.
Ports to multiple platforms were pretty common in those days with games and that's something the team had a lot of experience with from their years at Softdisk. Having looked at the game code, it's not really terribly difficult.
laichzeit0onJune 24, 2014
staunchonMay 14, 2018
2. Bill Gates parents were very upper-class, he attended expensive private school, was pushed into Harvard, and he had exclusive access to brand new computers that almost no children did at the time. Jobs/Carmack had no access similar to computers at private school.
3. I've read Masters of Doom and don't think any reasonable person would describe him as "an asshole" at all. Defining someone by their flaws says more about the definer than the defined.
JugurthaonMar 2, 2014
What you're witnessing in this thread isn't elitism as much as it is people who've ruined their eyes wanting to set the record clear.
Furthermore, that "Jobs" movie will probably appeal to most people because it's probably not accurate. It's probably a movie that will portray Steve Jobs as that genius who knew the future before everyone else, who've seen how Apple would be 20 years before everyone else. Anyone with more than 2 neurons knows it's a bunch of crap. You can't know how the end result will be designing a really small thing, let alone an empire.
In addition, it's "Cinema", not History nor Journalism. Want to read a good book? Read "Masters of Doom". That's how you get multiple opinions from people involved in the story, not some kind of lame movie based on the only authorized biography of a person, as brilliant as that person may be.
And lastly, come on, attacking Woz? If someone manages to get the respect of Engineers, you can be sure it's not because of his wits or Reality Distortion Field. Last time I checked, this is Hacker News. If there is any place elitism is the de facto constitution, it's in the Hackerdom.
markus_zhangonMay 17, 2020
Here is a list of 12 games that I picked because I'm biased towards RPG but you can definitely choose your own wishlist.
Part one: Warm up and basic input, audio and video.
Pong, Snake, Tetris, Breakout, Galaxian, Frogger.
Part Two: Scrolling screen, levels and overall game architecture:
Super Mario, Gradius, Twinbee
Part Three: RPGs which are more or less "complete" games and need some tooling:
Ultima III, Wizardry I Japanese version, Dungeon Master
Part Four: Just keep practicing. You already graduated and can do whatever you want!
Also don't forgrt to read Masters of Doom which will give you tons of inspiration. You can actually walk Carmack's route as well. His first commercial game is an Ultima spin off called Wraith.
_haoonMay 22, 2018
yannicktonFeb 15, 2013
Ace17onAug 8, 2016
InsanityonJuly 13, 2018
Non-fiction
a) Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)
b) Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (Kim Zetter)
c) Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Steven Levy)
d) Masters of Doom (David Kushner)
Fiction:
e) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy)
f) Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)
bemonApr 28, 2021
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom
chopsonOct 12, 2012
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
I read it when it was new 8 years ago, and I think I'm probably due for another reading, myself.
kakarotonDec 22, 2016
I cannot recommend Masters of Doom highly enough to anyone on this website. It's about the rise of Id games and the technological and cultural breakthroughs they made in the industry. Kushner expertly weaves a tale about video games, programming and entrepreneurship in a way that few can. His attention to detail is masterful -- not simply an overabundance of detail, but detail in all the places it belongs. I really felt like I was there with the two great Johns, just as invested in the future of Id as they were.
ZiadHilalonApr 13, 2012
claudiulodroonOct 26, 2020
batty_alexonMay 14, 2018
Neither of them are "self-made", they both had crazy access to electronics that hardly anyone else did at the time. They both did amazing things but, you're hand-waving away their real history for some "bootstrap-y" American success story.
Also, John Carmack WAS an asshole at id. Read Masters Of Doom sometime when you get a chance, loads of hubris and broken friendships in there.
JDWonOct 8, 2012
MrDomonDec 13, 2014
When people say only work in gaming if you can't imagine doing anything else, they mean it. The work is hard, the hours are long, the people are "colorful" and most gaming companies are completely disorganized, even by startup standards. Read "masters of doom" and realize what is depicted in that book is practically industry standard, including the egos, yelling, screaming and off-color humor. Some see those things are a bonus. Some don't.
The upsides are the technical problems and the coolness factor. To a certain extent, gaming has ruined me for web development. After coding a solution to efficiently visualize an EXPLODING PLANET, it's hard to get excited about creating yet another social network.
loganfrederickonAug 13, 2010
umvionJune 22, 2020
I recently read "Masters of Doom" because someone here recommended it, and both id software and ion storm were mainly run by single people working hellish 80-120 hour weeks. Technically John Romero had kids, but... early on in his startup he divorced in order to free up more time for making games.
paniconMar 5, 2018
> Late one night Carmack and his friends snuck up to a nearby school where they knew there were Apple II machines. Carmack had read about how a thermite paste could be used to melt through glass, but he needed some kind of adhesive material, like Vaseline. He mixed the concoction and applied it to the window, dissolving the glass so they could pop out holes to crawl through. A fat friend, however, had more than a little trouble squeezing inside; he reached through the hole instead and opened the window to let himself in. Doing so, he triggered the silent alarm. The cops came in no time.
> The fourteen-year-old Carmack was sent for psychiatric evaluation to help determine his sentence. He came into the room with a sizable chip on his shoulder. The interview didn’t go well. Carmack was later told the contents of his evaluation: “Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs ... no empathy for other human beings.” At one point the man twiddled his pencil and asked Carmack, “If you hadn’t been caught, do you think you would have done something like this again?”
> “If I hadn’t been caught,” Carmack replied honestly, “yes, I probably would have done that again.”
> Later he ran into the psychiatrist, who told him, “You know, it’s not very smart to tell someone you’re going to go do a crime again.”
> “I said, ‘if I hadn’t been caught,’ goddamn it!” Carmack replied. He was sentenced to one year in a small juvenile detention home in town. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II.
jimwalshonDec 10, 2013
Doom is the point where I became interested in programming and it got me looking to how you actually made these games. id Software eventually open sourcing Wolf3D really helped spur that on. On top of that, Carmacks talk and his always interesting .plan file (a blog before blogs) made him seem very accessible and really opened up the world of game programming. I still enjoy going back and reading parts of the Wolf 3D or Doom code to see how they handled certain problems/limitations.
I'd agree with the other poster that 'Masters of Doom' is a great read and worth it to grab if you haven't read it already.
RodericDayonAug 15, 2016
Reading "Masters of Doom" I couldn't help but feel that the technical constraints that existed at the time bred craftsmanship that seems hard to justify these days. Still trying, though.
freehunteronMar 27, 2020
What about Yahoo and Amazon and Pets.com and Webvan and eBay? What about stock being used for toilet paper and employees wheeling their Aeron chairs home when the company folded? What about Enron? How did 9/11 impact the Dotcom bust? Hell, what programming languages/frameworks were they using?
MikeCaponeonJune 26, 2012
That game changed my life. It was the most immersive, scariest thing ever. It was 4 players (not 2), and we had endless LANs and modem games. We made maps, there were whole map-making communities, whole BBSes only talking about Doom and Doom 2 and Heretic and other games based on it.. It was the biggest thing ever, even bigger than Quake in many ways because there was a lot fewer similar games at the time. I played through the single player so many times that I can revisit most maps in my mind 15+ years later...
Even the book Masters of Doom is mostly about how that game was created, rather than Quake or other id games that came before or after because Doom truly was the game changer.
jerrreonNov 21, 2017
Actually I like the idea of full stories about the history of specific software. (Obviously haven't read this one just now, so can't say whether it's any good).
Does anyone know of other books (physical prints would be preferable to me) in this genre? Masters of Doom comes to mind, but it's a bit too much about the personal story maybe.
Edit: I see it's also available in print on Amazon
mentatonJan 1, 2016
CamperBob2onJune 27, 2013
"Masters of Doom" addresses this, I think, when it recounts how John Carmack stole an Apple II.
A master will always find a way. But his/her priorities may not always be shared or respected.
ndesaulniersonApr 9, 2015
* The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition (Bjarne Stroustrup)
* Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 (Scott Meyers)
* Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach with WebGL (7th Edition) (Edward Angel & Dave Schreiner)
* Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture (David Kushner)
* Neuromancer (William Gibson)
I most recently finished:
* Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them (Cynthia Shapiro)
* C++ for dinosaurs (Nick Economidis)
I am highly anticipating the final(?) book of the Ender's Game Series by Orson Scott Card titled Shadows Alive.
I just learned about and probably will buy:
* The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
fossuseronMay 15, 2015
Currently reading Masters of Doom and it's really good in case people are interested.
Here's the Promo video shown at a Microsoft event back then (cringe warning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dVAhFYjp9c
xiaomaonAug 2, 2016
>The gamers weren’t just Softdisk guys anymore, they were, as they called
themselves, the IFD guys, co-owners of Ideas from the Deep. Softdisk, as a result, took on an even greater pallor. But it was a day job, a job they all needed since there was no real money coming in yet and no guarantee that it would come in at all. They decided, then, to continue working on titles for
Gamers Edge during the day while they churned out Commander Keen from the lake house at night.
>They became all the more efficient at "borrowing" the Softdisk computers. Every night after work they’d back their cars up to the office and load the machines. The next morning they’d come in early enough to bring the com-
puters back. They even got a little cocky about it. Though the machines were top of the line, they wanted some minor adjustments made..."
chopsonMay 1, 2009
It instantly reminded me of the story of when Carmack and Romero decided to go on their own after they were working together at Softdisk. At the time, there were no side-scroller games for PC for performance reasons. Carmack (20 years old at the time) had an idea, I believe it was about shifting the pointer of the display (or something to that effect), that allowed smooth side-scrolling enough to emulate the effects of the NES. He stayed up all night, and left a floppy at Romero's desk for the next day. When Romero got in the next day, and played the disk, Romero pretty much said "That's it, we're outta here" and from that initial engine was born Commander Keen, and the beginning of the legend of John Carmack.
It's been a few years since I read the book "Masters of Doom", so some of the details are hazy, but I thoroughly recommend it.
Carmack's genius is just out of this world.
Edit: Factual Correction.
leoconNov 22, 2020
Michael A. Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning about the heyday of computing research at Xerox PARC isn't universally praised (IIRC it's more or less Bob Metcalfe's version of the story) but it is very readable.
Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning, about the golden age of Japanese consumer electronics (wich also covers many events and actors in the US and UK).
David Kushner's Masters of Doom, about the heyday of Id Software.
The First Computers—History and Architectures is a more academic book, a selection of history papers, but it's still very readable. The Computer Pioneers: Pioneer Computers videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qundvme1Tik&list=PL14396C953... , presented by Gordon Moore himself, cover much of the same ground (it says little about the wartime Bletchley Park computers).
If I'm going to allow myself some videos then I should also mention Steve Blank "Secret History of Silicon Valley" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo and David Alan Grier's "When Computers Were Human" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwqltwvPnkw .
lightcatcheronMar 25, 2014
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.
piratekingonDec 10, 2013
Also interestingly, John Romero made a brief appearance at the Homebrew Computer Club Reunion last month (which I attended).
I would be very interested in hearing about your ideas for porting DoomEd to OS X. My contact is in my profile. I played Doom and Quake casually back in the day and followed the Daitkatana saga in the game magazines, but never got a chance to play seriously or mess around with the mods (I had a really crappy computer).
robodaleonOct 30, 2012
Push a deadline back because of a storm?
Really?
angersockonFeb 13, 2012
Contrast with, say, "Masters of Doom" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom) where the early id software team was so pressed for cash that they would "borrow" their employer's workstations during evenings to write their code. That's what I would consider "scrappy".
angersockonMay 24, 2013
Read "Masters of Doom", read "Soul of a New Machine", read "The New New Thing", read iWoz: we see that products fail all the time, that pioneers take a bath, that the second mouse gets the cheese--but that engineers are always in demand.
A business can fail, but raw material is always being looked for.
kn0thingonJune 15, 2013
I also really didn't want to waste my reader's time (my writing is pretty conversational and there are even some jokes in the book along with doodles) so I advertise on the back that the book can be read in 5 hrs (or a crosscountry flight).
2. Yep! They asked me to read it (I of course said yes, since Christopher Walken wasn't available).
dumbartononJuly 11, 2014
It was recently suggested to me that every entrepreneur should read Sir Richard Branson's autobiography. I was dismissive having read the LRB review of Bower's biography of "the stuntman": http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/david-runciman/the-stuntman.
Is "Losing My Virginity" worth a peruse? Or should we just wait for Gates himself to deliver his memoirs?