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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#561

Post by annadane »

eddiewithzato wrote: post #549
danuker wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I couldn't believe Facebook bet so much on VR, and especially a low-quality 3D MMORPG full of micropayments. With no LEGS. How long have video game characters had legs?? I feel dizzy even playing Minecraft on a plain screen. I won't ever buy VR goggles. Let alone ones bound to a Facebook account.

Zuck must’ve been high when OKing VR, I still think Google Glass is the way forward with augmented reality. Very comfortable and isn’t trying to rewrite how humans communicate. I have VR and it is immersive, but way too uncomfortable.

He's not high, he's been treating people like contempt ever since Harvard, this isn't new

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#562

Post by ghaff »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #538
comfypotato wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of upsetting this thread’s balance and reducing it to negativity: I prefer your parent comment’s interpretation of the Go. “Ahead of its time”? Technology is the last space where a newfangled product would lose momentum by being released to early. I’m open to being proved ignorant here. Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted? Subscription music services like…

I've always thought that TiVo was way ahead of its time. The company is still alive but it feels weird to talk about it in present tense when we've got Roku, Chromecast, Firestick, and Apple TV. Even the era of cable provider DVRs made me feel like TiVo was ahead of its time!

TiVo was sort of a niche and basically as soon as DVRs weren't, the mainstream was fine with just using whatever they got from their cable provider.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#563

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #538
comfypotato wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of upsetting this thread’s balance and reducing it to negativity: I prefer your parent comment’s interpretation of the Go. “Ahead of its time”? Technology is the last space where a newfangled product would lose momentum by being released to early. I’m open to being proved ignorant here. Can you think of some examples where tech was obviously ahead of its time and not accepted? Subscription music services like…

I've always thought that TiVo was way ahead of its time. The company is still alive but it feels weird to talk about it in present tense when we've got Roku, Chromecast, Firestick, and Apple TV. Even the era of cable provider DVRs made me feel like TiVo was ahead of its time!

Tivo nailed the user experience which is why it took off. In the early years, the response time on the interface was nearly instant for everything. This made it delightful to use because it felt like an extension of your intentions. Today, even with all the content in the world available, there are far more delays and wait times because the content is streaming and not local. Even YouTube TV, which could have the same 10ms response time as Stadia, is slow in many places.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#565

Post by MrScruff »

moralestapia wrote: post #532
iforgotpassword wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah well, you're anonymous, so you might as well be someone with a huge ego who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still bitter about it. More often than not, when people think they "prove something wrong with data" it's more that they're "taking some data and interpret in a way that fits their standpoint". Carmack has proven enough times in the past that he's able to deliver, that he can push technolog…

>who got their idea shut down by Carmack once and is still bitter about it Nice fantasy you created there to support your argument. Have you heard of "don't shoot the messenger" ? I admire Carmack as much all other hackers around. I don't sympathize with many of Meta's practices. Still, it's entirely plausible that GP's experience holds truth. I've been around the equivalent of people like Carmack in academia and all…

I think the point was that any large enough company will have a ton of politics related to decisions around technology, so one person's anonymous perspective shouldn't carry much/any weight.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#566

Post by pclmulqdq »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #503
khazhoux wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed. This doesn't actually surprise me in the least bit, and that's not a criticism of either FB/Meta or Carmack. It's simply that after a couple of decades in industry, I now see that effective organizational leaders are exceedingly rare, and I've seen now many super-expe…

For every example of smart, thoughtful, effective senior leadership there are 10 or 100 of the opposite sort. Most corporations are a living proof of Peter's principle, where senior management is a country club of old* people covering each other's incompetence. * It is not about ageism, but about people that are in their 5 years before retirement and have zero motivation to do any work, keep skills in shape or give a…

That honestly sounds like a lot of tech "gurus" too, like Mudge and Carmack. These people made a name for themselves with incredible skill as an IC (usually in a hot field, too), and never made the transition beyond that level, towards being leaders with the ability to grasp the full picture.

There is a completely different set of skills involved. In fact, the best wide-area tech leads I met at Google were not great engineers, but they were very good at inspiring other engineers.

I think this is where Steve Jobs actually deserves a lot of credit, and honestly Elon Musk too.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#567

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #527
chongli wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's a reason the folk wisdom tells you to never meet your heroes. When you do, you painfully realize that the stories didn't focus on their humanity but instead were spinning the myths of their divinity. This is part of the reason I like Steve Jobs so much. The stories around him never failed to mention his legendary penchant for downright nasty behaviour. And yet people loved him anyway, even when they lived…

I don't think many people loved Jobs, and a good few hated him. But unlike most narcissistic assholes he was unusually good at certain things [1]. And he could be persuaded to change his mind when he was dead wrong, at least some of the time. So that made him tolerated. [1] Finding good people, understanding that computing is about services and UX and not just boxes, and having a goal for commodity computing that was…

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#568

Post by freddref »

Arjuna wrote: post #111

”It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I…

I so wish I could "kill stupid things before they cause damage", "set direction" and have people follow, but it seems especially difficult for technical people.

We spend all-day every-day talking to our subservient (a compiler) but a human is fuzzy and unreliable which is compounded by team size. Carmack can realize something in an instant but it is amazing how long it can take an entire team.

One thing I've noticed that really does not work is "complaining", if Carmack thinks he is complaining, then magnify that by 10 for others on the team.

Rather than attacking an idea directly, I'm wondering if ignoring the idea may be more effective. This way there's no one to fight and the idea can slip away without any ego or drama, there's no face to lose.

If you really can't help the situation, then leaving is the last resort. Oh well, on to the next thing, very curious to see what Carmack gets into next.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#569

Post by eyko »

khazhoux wrote: post #475
eyko wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Then we should dismiss your critique of his critique, since you are also anonymous :-)

You can, but I'm not that anonymous (one can easily find my name by searching for my username, not that there's much interesting to find anyway). More importantly, I wouldn't try to damage a person's reputation if I wasn't ready to stand behind what I said and, if proven wrong myself, take some responsibility. I think a few negative things were said about his personality, which can be damaging. An anonymous internet comment is not the most credible source though.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Meta, don't know Carmack, etc.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#570

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

kubb wrote: post #466
throwaway_8989 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…

HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity. Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it all up. It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities, and in our mind they become demigods. But there's a reason the folk wis…

More than that, I think it's important to remember that no one, even a technologist as strong as Carmack, is going to get more right than wrong.

Carmack has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. I grew up eagerly reading his plan files.

But if we look at the big picture, a lot of his big calls haven't in fact worked out.

His vision for the future of graphics was to stick closer to the original OpenGL state machine, and just make it so blazing fast you could do complex lighting and materials via accumulating 100's of passes per frame. The world chose shaders instead, and I don't think they got that wrong.

Stencil buffer shadows were a dead end.

iD tech used to set the standard for the entire industry, but long term its totally lost out to Unreal and Unity.

Carmack's ideas around sparse voxel trees were really interesting to me at the time, but now with hindsight I can see he totally misunderstood what artists want/need. They don't want to uniquely paint every bit of the game world, they want tools that let them use instancing and smart materials/shapes. In comparison Unreal's Nanite gets this totally right. Artist productivity is the key constraint in both film and games.

I don't say this to be pointlessly negative. As I said JC is one of my personal heros. But the problem with the "superman" approach to coding is no one is in fact superman, even someone like JC. It's just not possible to get complex calls like this right long term. If you don't pay that some respect in your interpersonal behavior, you are gonna end up alienating people.

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