I just want to point out how good of a dude Andre Lamothe is. I got "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" in 1994. We couldn't afford a computer though so I'd just read through it over and over through the summer of 94. I didn't understand C at all, so I just kinda reasoned my way through it.
Not great to learn that way. I finally got a computer in 1996 and had trouble getting the code examples setup... So I called Andre at this home! I was 15 at the time.
Back then, people generally had their number in the phone book so I somehow found the number for "Information" in San Francisco (Information was Google before google, for phone numbers basically. It had all the White Page information).
Anyway, I call up, and his girlfriend answered the phone. She seemed a little disgruntled (maybe just woke up) but I asked her if I could talk to Andre. He got on the phone and actually explained to me that I needed to link the libraries needed in the C++ GUI (I vaguely recall that the CD maybe came with one?)
After that he talked to me about a bunch of stuff about work ethic and programming philosphy. He had a super duper insane work ethic, writing all those 900 page books plus all the code and example games for that. And he was grinding them out pretty often, plus contributing a lot to other books, plus doing his own startup. 100 hours a week for years, and he's pretty smart so he works quick.
Anyway. I really took his advice to heart and when I got into the working world I took jobs very seriously and worked like a madman. In about 6 years I went from broke to basically having enough money to retire. And I really owe it all to him and that conversation we had that day. The lesson I took away from it wasn't to kill yourself working but that it's better to sacrifice some time upfront than have constant money issues. As a kid from a poor family this was huge in helping me get out of poverty. I never got a degree but really just his advice about hard work made it possible.
I got a chance to reconnect with him on Linkedin a couple years ago and share my story and he was really thrilled with how it went and took a lot of interest. He's continued on with all sorts of game programming startups and we kinda talked about it.
He could have easily done web development and made a killing doing his own startups but he was just so passionate about video games (keep in mind he was an adviser to Carmack). He led an army of people who went off to be game developers, though he said most pivoted to other things.
Andre was quite literally one of the most influential people in my life and I owe him a lot, and to this day I can't believe he'd take time out of his insanely busy schedule to help some kid all the way across the country, for no real gain to himself.