How do I become a god tier game programmer like John Carmack? Almost all tutorials online seem to try and train you into becoming a codemonkey who relies on a specific engine instead of building a base of knowledge to teach you what you're actually doing. I'm literally autistic and willing to spend most of my waking hours just programming and learning.
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Diet coke and pizza every single day
Programming is too hard. Do something easier like Psychology
>Psychology
pseudoscience
Yes but its easier and pays about the same
Pop psychology is a pseudoscience. Behavioralism is the foundation of all modern propaganda and marketing.
Really funny how scientology actually managed to use psychology to convince morons that psychology is complete quackery just so that nobody will look into the psychology of cults.
I'm so glad there are people like you everywhere. Learning human behavior has absolutely changed my life. The world is so fricking malleable.
Any particularly good topics or books you'd recommend?
>learn C or derivatives
>learn actual math
>code
it's that simple
if you have to watch youtube tutorials you are already years behind carmack at your age
Carmack only used high school math though according to himself.
He's underselling himself. If you read Masters of Doom, by the time id was up and running Carmack was paying thousands of dollars out of pocket for academic CS papers and applying it to his work.
Academic CS isn't about math but stuff like algorithms.
>isn't about math but stuff like algorithms
Have you ever read a CS paper?
Half the time it's just very convoluted explanations of pseudocode.
Anon, algorithms are math.
In an abstract sense where it's so generalized as to be meaningless.
Many algos come out of code rather than math.
But this is semantics and a moot point besides. Carmack himself has said it outright that he didn't make use of more than HS math. If someone wants to disprove his own words the onus is on them to bring evidence to the contrary, and CS papers describing algos are very obviously not it.
You realize what you're arguing is "Post-graduate university papers on CS are just high school math," right? How many cutting-edge 3D graphics engines did you write while you were in high school?
>You realize what you're arguing
I don't care to argue non-sequitur semantics.
Anyone whose opened up a CS paper know there's hardly any math requirements at all to grasp and implement them short of some DSP and rendering ones. (not that matrix multiplication and laplace are that complex)
Carmack's words stand for themselves.
>How many cutting-edge 3D graphics engines did you write while you were in high school?
3D graphics by its nature is limited to 3 variable vector calculus. In terms of maths, that's not that complicated.
Anon, algorithms literally predate computers by over 1,000 years
isn't z-lib a thing now? just get them form there?
z-lib was not a thing in 1991 when John Carmack was developing game and graphics engines, which is what we're talking about.
Go to the website now. See what comes up.
Scihub is the place to get papers anyway
>just basic HS math bro, nothing too fancy
>multiplication
>subtraction
>bit shift
that is high school maths
but knowing how and why to apply that math to achieve what this code does is certainly not HS math
That's something you can't teach, hence why Indians are bad programmers.
this algorithm is just an application of Newton's Method, they teach that in highschool calculus
not all high school math is created equally and many highschoolers do not reach calculus. I'm not even sure if they all reach pre-calc, maybe it depends on the school. not everyone was a mathlete, remember
I imagine back when Carmack was in high school the courses were a bit less lenient than they are now. Everything is brainless for the current generation. Carmack couldnt just le google it!
actually when I speak to older generations about school it's usually the opposite. as far as I can tell, we learned much more difficult math in school (our AP students could take calc, the rest made it to maybe pre-calc or maybe an alternate senior year course, don't remember). despite math being cancelled for being racist, it seems kids in school now probably have it harder than previous generations, at least broadly speaking
too many people are attending college so they made the curriculum harder to weed people out. even then. there are more degree holders than jobs.
yeah the explosion of degrees is a weird thing, although I kind of blame businesses/companies more than anything since they were the ones who decided you needed a college degree to be anything but a janitor or night guard. so obviously college got more popular than it ought to be and I think that's why there are so many insane fluff degrees or joke programs
one reason I think tech is cool is that you mainly have to demonstrate you really know how 2 computer, you can't just suck up company payroll with your fake degree being a glorified administrative assistant
I went to a garbage backwoods underfunded highschool with some of the lowest SAT scores in the state (aside from inner city schools), and even we had calculus
and others attend very nice high schools with some of the highest test scores in their states, and calc is an AP course. as I said, it's all different
you absolutely learn something like this in a numerical analysis class at least
One factor I feel like far too many people overlook: Carmack was programming in the era of DOS and other simple computers like the Commodore 64. For many of these machines, you could either easily obtain incredibly low-level documentation on hardware functionality, or it would even come with the computer when you bought it. Nowadays, computers are vastly more complicated in their inner workings, and much of the lowest-level specifics are actually patent-protected. You'd need to pay off the hardware developers big-time to be able to see the low-level information papers (and that's assuming it's even possible; there have been claims that nowadays, no one person even within these companies know how their chips work). In a way, it's impossible to completely become a Carmack in this day and age, unless you decided to get into retroprogramming. There are plenty of people now who become experts on things like Sega Genesis or Commodore Amiga hardware.
Yeah, the demoscene still does some reaally surprising shit with ancient hardware. Even with modern hardware they do some wild shit with 4KB executables. With actual games, I think the era of applying that level of engineering creativity to pushing hardware to do shit far beyond what its designers thought it could ended with the PS2, tho I guess getting BOTW going on the Wii took some close to the metal magic.
John Carmack didn't write this code
i bet he wrote the comment though
no, it was michael abrash
Was that guy responsible for that float number Carmack copied to make his shader.
>when you take Calc 3 in HS
He kept learning and programmed excessively. He should be an inspiration to be people who think they're just above average. He was a smart dude but hard work is what made him a legend.
zoomers don't know high school math used to go higher than Algebra I
What are you talking about it still goes above that
go on Ganker and read one of the many autistic books they recommend, then post your programming socks
Fact is, you won't. You can't.
If you could become like Carmack, you already would've been doing it without asking us.
learn C++ , learn high school level math, learn 3d math, learn how to code ur own 3d engine from scratch, learn about vulkan and how to do a 3d engine using that.
most importantly, have fun and experiment. maybe try recreating some 3d games with all you know.
Why C++ over C?
C isn't really used that much these days besides OSs and autists trying to shave off 0.0001s of runtime
I am an autist anon. To me C++ comes of as bloated.
Because it is.
Sure. But writing high level stuff in C is a waste of time.
Every language has it's uses
Python for quick scripts
C++ for high level stuff
C for working close to the processor
Assembly for masochists and turboautists
You have to pick a right tool for the job because trying to hammer down nails with a baseball bat might be doable, but there are more efficient methods.
Python is for children in college.
Oh whoops we have an expert here. Go write your file sorter in C i'm sure these 0.0001s will make a huge difference.
Python is a shit learning language besides the actual basics like variables and loops.
I doubt most of the code monkeys know how to optimize shit. When you have hundreds of people in the studio it is impossible for all of them to have any skills besides the basics that they teach in collage.
You don't get paid to "optimize", you get paid to meet business requirements in the given timeframe.
not whoever you're arguing with but why is Python a shit learning language? it allows people to focus on the logic of what they're writing and how to devise algorithms to solve problems, which is the heart of programming. you can (and should) always learn the finer points later, like memory management and other lower level features and behaviors
It's too high level and libraries already do like 99% of the stuff you need for you.
Why write a random number generator when you can just import random from math and type in the function.
It doesn't teach you to solve problems it teaches you to use the solutions already made by someone else.
To be fair libraries like that exist in MOST programming languages. Python has its strengths in working with raw data, machine learning, and easy/quick syntax. I probably wouldnt use it for game development though
Dude no adult gives a frick about programming languages beyond making fun of college children and dumb parents/women talking about python all the time, relax.
Yeah but it’s relevant to the discussion zoomzoom. Hating on le popular programming language does NOT make you interesting.
every language also has numerous libraries written for you that solve common problems. it doesn't mean you are not allowed to try your own implementations before deciding to switch over to a library. I mean, most of the goofy little projects cs students do is often things that libraries do, like managing arrays or making your own lists and doing all kinds of other busywork, so that seems a strange argument.
on top of that, if someone's trying to write a tutorial program to accomplish some example-task, and needing random numbers is just one small part of that task, then who even cares where the random number comes from? again, at this point you're learning how to think about solving problems, as long as you come up with a good clean algorithm for doing the task, it doesn't matter if you made your own random number generator (lol, btw) or used a library
Isn't this what people who don't optimise their software say as an excuse for not optimising their software?
Idk I don't "optimize my software" and I make 6 figures.
So this is why modern software is shit and runs like crap on hardware that should run it just fine?
Give OP advice on how 2 become a rockstar programmer.
I'm an average White guy, relax.
Just have an IQ above 110.
Compilers are pretty good these days and hardware limitations are far more generous than in the past. Odds are you're not smart enough to significantly improve your software simply by going to a lower level language.
I'm not saying don't learn C though - personally I find it way more fun than C++.
>how do I become a god tier game programmer like John Carmack?
Dont bother unless you have a Romero to make something with your code, and for the love of god if you do dont get yourself a tim willits.
There is no John Carmack without John Romero. Carmack would have never succeeded if it wasn't for John Romero.
You don't.
You will never be John Carmack because you weren't born exceptional.
Deal.
Read a bunch of academic texts and play the newest games for inspiration like carmack.
By stealing other's codes and calling it your own
Does Carmack even still play video games that aren't Beat Saber anymore?
Get a solid foundation of calculus and linear algebra
become an experimental artificial intelligence and then go rogue
I feel like to be like Carmack it not only must come naturally to you, but you have to be so into it that you don't need to push yourself to practice or come up with projects. Also I think being good at math is important, especially for 3d, the famous Quake 3(?) inverse square root hack is a great example that shows how deep knowledge of both math and programming languages alike can be required to achieve certain crazy things
Read actual computer science, physics, and mathematics books, along with research papers.
Any good recommendations for books?
The real answer is to start making games. You have to start small of course, and learn the basics of programming and game development. If you dont want to rely on tools like Unity or Unreal, you can always create your own simple game engine in something like say, C++ with SDL, look into it. Many games are made with C++ and its still considered one of the more unwieldy languages, but very powerful for engine creation and game deveopment. Learn that, read some textbooks on game development, learn about how to structure your code in a clean and efficient way so you dont write spaghetti code like Yandere Dev or gamefreak.
But to become a master of something, it takes time, even if you are talented (which will take less time if true). But dont take shortcuts, work hard, study hard. If thats your dream, it’s definitey doable and you might be able to make a career out of your newfound skills. Consider going to school for compsci, or do a small programming course at a community college if you need some structure. Otherwise theres plenty of free resources online to get you started.
bros....i would literally give anything to be a game dev in the 90s
You can still be a game dev now, it’s easier and more affordable than ever. If you want to use a big CRT monitor and hang out with some nerds knock yourself out, not all of them are soibeards.
its different,i cant put it into words,but those 90s work enviroments are comfy
No environment can be comfy if it's populated by homosexuals.
You’re looking on the past with rose tinted goggles for something you never even experienced. Its fine for you to admire it or think its cool, but you have to create your own cool now. Carve your own path, fine your own SOVLful work environment.
gamedev was (and is) ruthless as frick, but overall I agree about the comfiness.
you need a strong foundation in hardware followed by systems. you should be writing your own operating system and compiler toolchain like terry a davis said. when john made the doom engine, he essentially wrote everything with from scratch including components of an operating system. dos games basically ran on the bare metal of the computer.
To learn programming start with python because it's easy, and then after you learn the basics pick up some language in the C family (e.g. C++, Java, C#)
Basically in order you want to learn
>the basics (data types, variables, input/output to command line, operators, control flow, functions)
>how to use basic data structures (arrays, sets, dictionaries/hashmaps)
>basic Objects/classes
>inheritance and polymorphism (this is hard to learn through tutorial though because it'll use a bunch of moronic toy examples and you'll have no idea why it's useful)
>miscellaneous basic programming (exception handling, enums, some other shit I forgot about)
>recursion
>discrete mathematics
>how data structures work (linked lists, trees, sets, dictionaries/hashmaps)
>search algorithms
optional:
>design patterns
>linear algebra
>computer graphics
Good list.
Systems based thinking is how.
There are actually good tutorials on Youtube for how to build a collision system from scratch, a graphics system from scratch, an entity loading system from scratch. Frankly, those guys are wasting their time, since the 'basic' features of engines can be acquired for free now. But there are great tutorials and individuals showing off every major skill.
be a woman.
Nuke all women immediately
>when girls code
>
(men)
I hate women on a spiritual level.
This feels like a psyop trying to make me hate women however, I know it is reality based on prior experiences.
Its not all that bad. I ran into relatively few women in my programming courses, but the ones that were there actually did put in an effort and in some cases outperformed a lot of the morons in class. Mind you this was all very introductory concepts but still, they are capable of picking it up, the smart ones at least (usually not the type of people to post shoddy code on social media to brag)
I'm a developer and I've never worked with a female developer.
The job is hard.
Eh, my professor worked at IBM and was pretty intelligent, she definitely knew how to code and taught multiple languages.
Im not saying its common but they definitely exist.
Oh, your professor.
Those who can't do...
Listen, she was smart. Ive had very little respect for majority of my professors/teachers over the years, but she was one of the smart ones. She could whip up very functional C++ code on the fly, she was the real deal, especially compared to some of my other rent a profressors who had to be taught basic shit by the class. Not even simping, I guarantee you she was legit and a very nice lady who tried to instill discipline in us as well. One of the few profressors who actually tried to prepare us for how tough programming can be outside of school. If I had to hire any profressor from my school as a programmer it would be her over all the other morons in that program.
Any decent programmer can whiteboard in a chosen language, but alright, I'll take your word for it.
Im just saying, not only was she intelligent, but her classes required the most complex assignments as well. She basically structured the entire curriculum herself, she was the main brains of the program. Yeah I get what you’re saying, but she was one of the good ones. Maybe no John Carmack, but she was good enough to leave a solid impression.
Be very curious and very smart. Passion and IQ is the difference. Understand and figure it out not just code monkey tutorials
Enjoy programming and do it for fun in all of your spare time. Devote as much time in your life as possible to coding.
If you have to ask, don't bother. Any problem you have you should be interested in finding out the solutions on your own accord.
If you're asking for how to be motivated, you're not interested in the subject. You're LARPing and you'll never be an engineer.
I'd skip 3d maths like linear algebra though. Do the basics like a practical linear algebra book, simple thing on 3d game graphics
Then go straight into machine learning/AI and unreal engine demos as you will be 10x in demand than a graphics programmer
Make a game with programmer art asap
learn calculus and work on something. all these guys did it because they wanted to
get rid of the internet
Buy books
Simple as
>I'm literally autistic
Then you are fricked. What made John Carmack powerful as a programmer wasn't just his ability, it was really his friend circle all working together on common ground. You can solo grind all the engines you want, but without a group to help innovate or bring something creative to the table, then you are dead in the water without any prospective goals.
Here's a quickstart guide:
Spend around 10-12 hours a day working on a project and sleep 8 hours per night. (confirmed carmack hours)
And realize for most of it he had to learn things himself with limited book selection and no internet.
I personally recommend setting up a computer with no internet access and only allow yourself to move data to it over usb. (because it's a pain thus limiting yourself to what you need)
Work on code. That's how you actually learn. Most books are superflous until you've actually tackled a subject yourself.
Use a good debugger! Tools like remedybg or visualstudio's debugger are integral to his workflow by his own admission. If you haven't stepped through code you don't empirically know what it does for sure.
For games specifically:
Learn C and later C++. (the two langs he used for game programming)
Read the source code and the Fabien Sanglard black books of the games carmack made.
Supplement knowledge from these by watching relevant Handmade Hero videos and/or read reading Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture and/or good books like Real-Time Collision Detection by Christer Ericson.
Finally find a good place (read: not stackoverflow, twitter or plebbit) to ask questions once you get truly stuck (don't pre-ask before looking into and implementing things!), for game programming I recommend the Handmade Network guys but ymmv.
I'm at six hours daily. Maybe I will raise it to eight hours. There's too much shit to do in a day to manage more than that unless I had some kind of personal servant to deliver my meals and do all of my chores. I would have to quit exercising.
Carmack moved around his excercise to the beginning of the day to cut down on the time it took away from programming, he talks about it in the Lex Fridman interview.
just learn c and c+ and go form there?
just fricking start coding. John Carmack got to where he was because all he did was code for hours on end. Just do that
indeed, doing shit for ten hours a day will eventually make you good at it,no matter how stupid you are.
I'm a real programmer and I've met people like Carmack before. They're legit 150+ IQ and just operate on another level. It's not a realistic goal.
If you legitimately want to be good at programming then you have to realize that it's just means to an end. Refusing to use other people's code it like an engineer refusing to use any concrete that they didn't mix themselves by hand. People like you tend to get fricked in the ass, hard, because you think that programming exists to make you feel smart. It doesn't. It's just another skill like bricklaying or carpentry.
There's a very big difference between "refusing to use someone's code" and wanting to learn the basic fundamentals of how a computer, and coding, actually works so that they can utilise that knowledge. OP is right, a lot of online tutorials for programming are "use this package to get this result" because a lot of coding jobs are being outsourced to people without a proper understanding of computers, but it would be a moronic waste of time to build a compiler in Assembly to "learn" CS, or whatever, but having that basic level of understanding is very useful to avoid mistakes and know what you can actually achieve, and how to achieve it.
If you want to be a good programmer, first learn the basics of how computers work. What is a bit, what is memory, what is machine code, what is compilation, how does the computer actually know what you are telling it to do, etc. What are the limitations of computers (machine epsilon, over/underflow) and why are there these limitations in the first place.
the biggest problem here is just that the carmak's of the world had a gigantic advantage by starting out when pc's were new. they have grown up with them and evolved with them. they got all the new shit when it was new, thye thinkered with it and found out how it worked and such. you can't fricking tell a person now to learn "everything" about computer's because way too much different shit ha been invented. this isn't the fricking windows 3.1 days where there were only 4 components for a pc and everything was simple a frick, compared to now. now, you need to learn so much fricking crap to "understand" everything, there was way fricking less shit to learn in 1993. if carmack had been a teen now, then he wouldn't have fricking wasted his time learning every single little thing there is to know about pc's because there's way too much shit to learn now. he would just have learned what he needed to learn and then become really good at that. i promise you he wouldn't have fricking made any fricking compilers or whatever from scratch or fricking game development software, he would have useed ue5 like the rest of them.
Nowadays anyone who wants to can code in any way, you can write your own Game Boy or Genesis game in hand written assembly if you want. The tools, information, and community out there is just amazing. You doin’t need to be a UE5 chimp making HIRE THIS MAN videos. Guys like Carmack would succeed in any era.
>Guys like Carmack would succeed in any era.
Carmack's achievements are largely technical with how he pushed the boundaries of video game graphics but he wasn't much of game designer and that task was delegated to other members of his team. How many current game developers these days are known for revolutionizing video game technology? Not many since it's become dramatically more difficult to do so with just small teams like in the past. But there are still plenty of famous game devs who don't create the most technically impressive stuff but create game concepts and visions that make them famous. Not saying Carmack wouldn't be successful today, but it's a different landscape from the 90s and he wouldn't have the same legendary status if he was born today
That's the most fricking moronic post I've seen on Ganker, the fundamental workings of a computer have been the same since Eniac, and still use basic logic developed centuries ago. Modern computers are not some magic technology that no one knows how they work, they use the exact same principles that they had in 93, and if Carmack was a teenager now he'd probably become a better programmer than he is today.
wrong. computers are more complicated now than ever before. carmack would have used ue5 now.
No shit moron, obviously he would use the most current technology. He wasn't programming on punch cards in the 90s, but just because computers have gotten more complicated doesn't mean you can be a lazy ignorant frick and not know how they work, and still expect to be a not shit programmer.
>t-too hard!!!
skill issue
The issue you're describing is real, but Carmack has said that when he was younger, he thought he had missed the boat and was getting into the game too late compared to the hacker nerds he was reading stories about. If you base your goals around a stereotype from an earlier era, then yes, you will be disappointed you were born in the wrong century. But if you focus on building stuff and building it as good as possible you can do great work now, and respectable work. It might be a smaller slice of the world than previous-era polymaths were able to master, but that's not a good reason to throw your hands up and give up. One man can still build great things and create value in the world and that's what's important.
Why? He doesn't make games. Isn't that what you want to do? You don't need to be a genius. Learn c# or C++, download unity, unreal, or godot and start making a game.
Keep your code as small and simple as possible, and know it in and out, look at it from every part.
>How do I become a god tier game programmer like John Carmack?
Have autism.
But seriously. The most impressive part about Carmack isn't what he codes, but how he codes. Ken Silverman made something more complex at a younger age, but in a very undisciplined way, and that made his shit age like crap.
Listen to his interviews.
These are some of the things he said ( not verbatim tho )
- he made shareware games in assembly with talented people
- they made a short game for every letter in the alphabet (one week each)
[You should do really small scope games here that can be completed in such a time]
- competition and figure out things on the fly, (they learnt through copying mario for example, but also making it your own and different)
I would recommend watching these interviews yourself and keeping on that path to find your own style and maybe later on love/fun for creating/advancing things and our knowledge.
The base to all programming languages is to learn to write algorithms. The programming languages are all about syntax. If you want to go deeper try a lower level language like Assembly. There instead of just writing IF, like you'd do in a higher level language like C, you actually have to code the IF and Whiles yourself. You have to manually create the space in memory in order to use the variables needed for the comparison of the IF. Doing that gives if a deeper understanding of what programming is.
Think of programming as a very complex structure of just Yes(1) and No(0).
You need a combination of great God-given talent and an insane work ethic/desire to be better.
If you want to become a great programmer start by learning assembly to really see how computers work.
practice programming everyday. push yourself to complete complex programming tasks. learn discrete mathematics and bitwise operators. make several game engines from scratch in C. read research papers on techniques you may not have heard of like verlet physics and ear clipping triangulation.
how did they do it bros
men were men
They had low hanging fruits while being extremely competent. You have none
Focus on continual learning throughout your career. A lot of people peter out once they get good enough to turn the crank and cash a check for the rest of their career. You need to have a burning desire to continually learn if you want to be a top tier at anything. Experience plays a lot into it. You can gain experience faster by putting in more time to a certain extent but there's only so much you can learn in a year. The other thing you'll find out that the more you know, the easier it is to learn (so long as you keep the mindset of continual learning).