
John Carmack: My Steve Jobs Stories - AJRF
https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825593223&id=100006735798590
======
Arjuna
John mentioning his NeXT computer in this post reminded me of his NeXT
computer purchase story from _Masters of Doom_ :

"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."

~~~
segmondy
How many people will spend that money today? I see folks refusing to spend
$10/$20 of their own money to get better. It's the weirdest thing. I told
someone to spend $100 and run an experiment this past weekend, they looked at
me like I lost my mind.

~~~
shams93
Developers outside of the machine learning PHD world don't make that huge an
income, especially if you live in a high rent area and are single they tax the
heck out of you in california today. Back then people could afford to drop
these large amounts on projects because rent was like $125 a month and taxes
were very low compared to say modern california. It actually goes to show how
an economy that benefits the rentiers has a way of shutting down innovation
and experimentation as all resources go to cover the basics.

~~~
encoderer
There is a pervasive idea that developer salaries in sf and other tech cities
only cover the rents, etc. Not at all true. Thousands and thousands of career
developers making great wages. It’s not VCs driving real estate prices.

~~~
phendrenad2
It is true, the salaries keep going up and the rent goes up to match it.

~~~
rhizome
There's a saying that wage increases are absorbed by landlords.

------
uptown
"I did think it was cool to trade a few emails with Steve Jobs."

Funny he should write that. Many, many years ago I wrote an email to John
Carmack asking something about his .plan postings which must have seemed
fairly mundane looking back on it now. He was nice enough to write me back.
And I thought that was pretty cool too.

I guess it just goes to show that even the people you respect or admire have
people they respect and admire themselves.

~~~
IntelMiner
Years ago, my friends and I got drunk while celebrating my 20th birthday

As a joke, I emailed Gabe Newell and asked if he'd wish me a happy birthday

Much to my surprise, he actually replied!
[https://i.imgur.com/n0BvCPS.png](https://i.imgur.com/n0BvCPS.png)

I can only imagine the amount of garbage he gets in his inbox every day. So to
get that email back (on a Sunday for him, as well) was pretty heart warming

~~~
danso
I once emailed Woz about some trivial question about the old Apple machines.
He emailed me right back with an apology about how he was too busy to answer
all these kinds of emails and then in the next sentence, answered my question
anyway.

~~~
scriptproof
Different story. I once asked a question to the author of 7-Zip to include it
in a software and received in return a link to the FAQ!

------
pweissbrod
Rapid switch between charming and aggressive. Creating an environment where
you surround yourself with sycophants. Punch downwards at employees working
for you to assert and maintain your power while projecting you aspire for
"higher standards". Set unrealistic expectations to see which folks will work
nights and weekends to your order.

^^ Managers take note. These are excellent traits to climbing the corporate
ladder. Just be a dick without looking like a dick.

~~~
scarface74
You can only do that if you're Steve Jobs. The chances of someone ever working
on a product that's going to define an industry are infinitesimal.

If I got a chance to work on the iPhone in 2006, yeah I might put up with a
lot of crap. If all I'm doing is writing yet another software as a service
CRUD app and I have an insufferable manager - I'll jump ship so fast it will
make their head spin.

On second thought, thier head won't spin, they will put out a rec the day I
submit my letter of resignation and forget I existed in three months.

~~~
sgift
> I'll jump ship so fast it will make their head spin.

Sure, you do. Many people don't. There was this thread on Amazon today which
tells me people put up with many, many abuses. Fertile ground for others to
follow Jobs example.

~~~
blackbagboys
There's a book I remember reading - I can't remember, but it may have been
_The Dictator 's Handbook_ \- which talked about how this is a common
management pattern in authoritarian dictatorships (although typically somewhat
more extreme in its implementation). The dictator ends up weeding out most
people of exceptional talent and competence, but it consolidates his personal
power. Bad for the state when it faces a crisis, but good for him personally.
Easy to see how this applies to senior management at a public company.

~~~
gowld
So why did it work so well for Jobs? Perhaps because in the tech industry, you
have a high frequency of the rare combination of incredible talent in a
profitable industry combined with social/political non-talent, so people feel
stuck where they are, or love their work so much they don't care if they are
unfairly treated?

Look at open-source, for example. People with little money, often in poor
countries, _giving away_ software that generate $billions in profits for
already wealthy people.

~~~
rahoulb
Jobs said that what he learnt at Pixar was to hire and trust great people.

I think there is a big difference between people who try to act like Jobs and
Jobs himself.

~~~
pcwalton
> Jobs said that what he learnt at Pixar was to hire and trust great people.

Given what we now know about John Lasseter, Jobs' record on implementing this
advice was decidedly mixed.

~~~
mcphage
What do we know about John Lasseter now?

~~~
pcwalton
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16687192/pixar-disney-
an...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16687192/pixar-disney-animation-
john-lasseter-sexual-harassment-complaints)

------
Rainymood
Honestly, I think this is what it's like to be in an abusive relationship. You
_know_ he's abusive and yet you still stay in the relationship with him/her
because of all the good times and you delude yourself into thinking that's OK
... I think this gives a rarely glimpse into the rationalizations that happen
in the mind of people that are in abusive relationships. From the outside it
is trivial to see that the relationship dynamic is abusive but when you're in
it ... suddenly it's OK even for one of the most renowned programmers of all
time?

~~~
donquichotte
"One time, [...] Steve [...] wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be
scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm,
he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing.
Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her”
John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of
consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t
do that keynote."

Quite Machiavellian, asking somebody to reschedule their wedding for a keynote
and being completely unwilling to return the slightest favour!

~~~
mywittyname
The dude got off on power plays. I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason
Carmack was invited to that particular keynote was _because_ it was happening
on his wedding day.

------
DonHopkins
On October 25 1988, I gave Steve Jobs a demo of pie menus, NeWS, UniPress
Emacs and HyperTIES at the Educom conference in Washington DC. His reaction
was to jump up and down, point at the screen, and yell “That sucks! That
sucks! Wow, that’s neat! That sucks!”

I tried explaining how we'd performed an experiment proving pie menus were
faster than linear menus [1], but he insisted the liner menus in NeXT Step
were the best possible menus ever.

But who was I to rain on his parade, two weeks after the first release of NeXT
Step 0.8? (Up to that time, it was the most hyped piece of vaporware ever, and
doubters were wearing t-shirts saying "NeVR Step"!)

[1] [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/an-empirical-comparison-of-
pi...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie-vs-
linear-menus-466c6fdbba4b)

~~~
justin66
I'll have to read the article. I'm a little surprised that pie menus never
caught on even in the era of tablets, where they seem extremely well-suited.

~~~
panic
They do see some use in games, where you have control over all the menu items.
Long strings can break pie menu layout pretty badly, especially if you bring
up the menu near the edge of the screen.

~~~
DonHopkins
That's all true!

Here's an illustrated transcript of a video (and the video itself)
demonstrating the pie menus (and SimAntics visual programming language) in The
Sims!

The Sims Pie Menus: [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-
menus-49ca02a74d...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-
menus-49ca02a74da3)

And this discusses the issues you raised and more:

OLPC Sugar Pie Menu Discussion: [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/olpc-sugar-
pie-menu-discussio...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/olpc-sugar-pie-menu-
discussion-738577e54516)

~~~
canuckintime
Any thoughts on Microsoft's Surface Dial [1] radial menu?

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/design/input/wi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/design/input/windows-wheel-interactions)

~~~
DonHopkins
Good question -- glad you asked! (No, really! ;)

Turning a dial is a totally different gesture than making directional strokes,
so they are different beasts, and a dial lacks the advantages pie menus derive
from exploiting Fitts's Law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law)

Even though the Surface Dial has a round dial, that is nothing like a pie
menu, even though it's round, because you turn it. Pie menus aren't about
turning around the center, they're about stroking out from the center.

Also a rotating carousel or rocker switch that you turn or nudge clockwise or
counterclockwise to change between different items, and then click to select
an item, is not anything like a pie menu.

You have to turn a dial or carousel more and more to select each subsequent
item. (Just like you have to move the cursor more and more downwards to select
each subsequent item of a linear pull-down menu).

With pull down menus, click wheels and carousels, selection is linear O(n),
while with a pie menu you only have to perform one short directional gesture
to select any item, so selection is constant O(1) (with a small constant, the
inner inactive radius of the hole in the middle, which you can make larger if
you're a spaz).

Also, the items themselves should never rotate around the menu (unless you're
doing some quick transient snazzy spin-up animation), they should always stay
in the same direction.

Here are some window management pie menus that spin up if you click them up
without moving, and tilt up around the axis perpendicular to the direction of
motion, if you move away from the center before they pop up:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4)

Stallman likes to classify an emacs-like text editor that totally misses the
point of emacs by not having an extension language as an "erzatz emacs". In
the same sense, there are many "erzatz pie menus" that may look like pie menus
on the surface, but don't actually track or feel like pie menus, or benefit
from all of their advantages, because they aren't designed to optimize for
Fitts's Law by being based purely on the direction between stroke endpoints
instead of the entire path, minimizing the distance to the targets, and
maximizing the size of the targets.

Another way to implement frustrating difficult to use erzatz pie menus that
totally miss the point is to only use the small areas of the item labels as
targets, not the entire huge wedge shaped pie slices extending out to the
screen edge.

Yet another way to screw them up is to trigger them when you move a certain
distance from the center (or pop them up when you roll over a target without
clicking, or use time-outs without clicking), instead of when you click or
release the mouse (or tap or release your finger, pen, etc). There should
always be a kinesthetic delimiter like a click or tap at the beginning and
ending of the stroke, but the stroke is free wander around any path or pause
for any duration. Only the angle between the delimiters matters, to allow for
browsing and reselection and error correction.

If distance or time is the trigger, the user has no way of reliably and
directly controlling or sensing at which point the selection happens, or using
the menus without looking at the screen, and it terribly interferes with
navigating nested pie menus.

Any pie menu that does not initially pop up with the cursor (or your finger)
in the center, or that is already showing before you start tracking from
anywhere on the screen, is terribly broken, because the whole point is to
bring the pie menu center to you, so you can select with quick directional
gestures without looking at the screen, not for you to have to first look at
the screen and then move to the center yourself. That would totally defeat the
purpose of pie menus!

Handling the screen edge problem can get tricky, especially when combined with
mouse-ahead display suppression. One way of handling that is to "warp" the
mouse back to the center of the menu if the menu needs to be moved to fit on
the screen. But you must be careful not to cancel out any motion away from the
center that's already happened (which is why you should delay warping the
mouse until you actually pop up the menu (if ever), so there is no mouse
warping when you mouse ahead and the menu is not displayed).

Web browser don't directly support mouse warping (i.e. like XWarpPointer), and
you can't tell if the edge of the browser window is actually the edge of the
screen, but you can use the "Pointer Lock API" to implement a software cursor
that you can warp anywhere in the window you want (but not outside).

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Loc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API)

There's a lot more discussion of screen edge handling and mouse-ahead display
suppression here:

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/olpc-sugar-pie-menu-
discussio...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/olpc-sugar-pie-menu-
discussion-738577e54516)

Also see the discussion of "gesture space" here:

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/gesture-
space-842e3cdc7102](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/gesture-space-842e3cdc7102)

------
nimbius
Im all for giving the dead their rest, but Steve was in my honest opinion more
asshole than legend.

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-
clo...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-closed-
california-wants-temporary-license-plates/)

Registration funds important things like police, fire, and public education.
Rolling around town as a tightwad billionaire who thinks hes too good to pay
for public services is beyond the pale.

~~~
coldtea
> _Im all for giving the dead their rest, but Steve was in my honest opinion
> more asshole than legend._

Because he didn't pay registration fees? How well do you know people? The
average person has done much worse than this.

Besides, "more asshole than legend" goes to some random asshole, not to a
person that, asshole or not, still inspired millions, was several times
"person of the year", and built the most valuable market cap company in
history.

All that, and the worst that they say about him is that he was mean and petty
sometimes, and didn't recognize his daughter at first. There are tons of major
figures of history that have done way way worst things than that.

> _Registration funds important things like police, fire, and public
> education. Rolling around town as a tightwad billionaire who thinks hes too
> good to pay for public services is beyond the pale._

As if he did it to avoid paying registration funds. And as if his fortune
haven't been used to pay tons of charity and public taxes and build jobs.

~~~
pcwalton
> Because he didn't pay registration fees?

Because he used his plates, or lack thereof, to park in disabled parking
spaces [1]. That speaks volumes about what kind of person Steve Jobs was.

[1]:
[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Handicapped.txt](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Handicapped.txt)

~~~
coldtea
Someone who sees through the "disabled parking spaces" BS in the US, where
everyone can get their doctor to mark them as "disabled" and park there,
mocking the actual disabled?

~~~
pcwalton
It's not doctors who are "mocking the actual disabled" here.

------
melling
"After the public cleared out and the rest of us were gathered in front of the
stage, I started urgently going on about how web apps are terrible, and
wouldn’t show the true potential of the device. We could do so much more with
real native access!"

Where was Carmack when everyone was forcing us to listen to "web apps are the
future of mobile"?

He could have ended that HN debated instantly.

~~~
overcast
Web apps are the future, how many more stupid native apps must I install to
get basic textual and photo information? The only right answer is universal
apps(the web).

~~~
untog
Any absolute answer is wrong here.

Native apps will likely always have a place when OS/UI integration are
paramount. But web apps will become a lot more prevalent than they have been
previous as more and more hooks are exposed to the native core. Which is a
good thing for everyone.

~~~
taoistextremist
Yeah, there's certain things that native apps make a lot more sense for (e.g.
messaging apps like Facebook Messenger where you want notifications to come up
similar to text messages), but certain things really don't need anything more
than the mobile website you look at (for example, at least for some people,
mobile Wikipedia over the app).

~~~
untog
> (e.g. messaging apps like Facebook Messenger where you want notifications to
> come up similar to text messages)

Actually I'd argue the web is great for that too. On Android you can already
implement a messaging app, complete with notifications, on the web.

I wish people like my bank used it. I don't want to install their native app
because I barely ever use it, but would I like to get urgent notifications
from them every now and then? You bet I would.

~~~
taoistextremist
I personally don't like relying on my browser for notifications. I like having
native apps because usually fine tuning notifications for them is easier in
that respect, things that while I imagine are possible through the web
browser, probably aren't going to be done on a web app. It's also just an
organizational thing since I don't like to have a list of a bunch of tabs, but
having a handful of apps isn't too bad to navigate through.

Just because there's been a lot of progress in making web apps do things that
were more natural for native apps, doesn't mean that it's the _best_ way to go
about something.

I get the wish for more support for web apps, though. I just switched over
from a near 4-year-old phone that was replete with security updates and other
un-removable stuff in the storage which prevented me from having a lot of apps
installed (especially as so many insist on a large footprint in internal
storage), so I increasingly used my web browser to access things. After the
switch, though, you can bet I downloaded a bunch of apps I had deleted.

------
palisade
This is a pretty touching story. John has definitely been one of my heroes for
a long time in the field as has Steve. At the end of the day, they're human.
It sucks that he regrets not getting back in touch with Steve before his
passing. We can't turn back time unfortunately. I guess the lesson here is we
can get focused on the hero worship and the little details and forget we are
dealing with someone's ego and feelings. Some constructive criticism from John
and a declined phone call broke up their relationship. :(

Steve could be rough to work with but they obviously had respect for one
another, so it is sad to see in the end there was some bad blood. At least
John tried to get back in touch. I think the line at the end really says it
all, "...but elements of the path that led to where I am today were contingent
on the dents he left in the universe. I showed up for him."

Edit: If you're reading this John, thank you for all the gaming joy you've
given the world over the years. I remember asking you programming questions
and you were always responsive. You've left dents for others too.

Edit: Regarding the snide comment Steve made that you could write your own OS.
He might have secretly feared you would. He knew you could.

------
remir
I think it's weird how Apple, even to this day, took some of Jobs's "darker"
traits as if he still runs the place.

For example, a couple of years ago, I remember a game dev saying that they
made one of the top selling game on iOS and received plenty of attention/help
from Apple's engineers at WWDC, but when they made an Android version of their
game, suddenly it was radio silence with Apple.

This is the kind of thing Jobs would have done, but now that he's gone, I'm
disappointed that Apple did not evolve past this kind of behavior.

~~~
rimliu
Would it be any different had he not released the Android version? Or was the
expectation to be invited to the every WWDC from then on?

~~~
remir
I'm sure it would have been different, yes. I don't know if they expected to
be invited to every WWDC, but I remember the developer saying he had good
access at Apple because they loved his app so much.

When he announced his Android version, Apple kinda stopped returning his calls
and engineers would not give him as much time for questions and help. He went
from VIP to nobody.

------
dchichkov
The impact that John Carmack has on the industry is just ridiculous. Apple,
NVIDIA, Facebook. As a teenage software engineer, _he_ was a revered figure to
me (and I wonder to how many others). I've had an opportunity to work with his
source code for a few months - it was a thing of beauty. If you want to learn
from him, read his source code and essays. They are full of brilliance.

------
ceronman
A question from someone who has never seen a NeXT computer:

How is it possible that Doom was developed on NeXT?

As far as I know, Doom was first released for MS-DOS. Wouldn't be really hard
to develop a MS-DOS game from another operative system and another CPU
architecture? Specially at the time without engines abstracting platform
details?

~~~
busterarm
[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/NEXTSTEP](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/NEXTSTEP)

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.

~~~
kyberias
I don't think so. It's just that the development environment was so much more
productive on NeXT.

~~~
saagarjha
After having a _very_ recent encounter with developing software on NeXTSTEP
3.3, I'll have to agree with you. For how old it is, it held up pretty well!

------
loxs
Desktop (non mobile) link:
[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825...](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825593223&id=100006735798590)

------
ksec
@John Carmack,

My biggest question is, why now? I mean what trigger you to post this / share
this pieces about Steve Jobs?

The reason I ask was because only a few week ago I posted a few comments about
the state of Mac, Gaming on Mac and Gaming as iOS App Revenue. In the age of
E-Sports and Gaming is the sole segment that is pushing / slowing / stopping
the decline of PC sales, I wonder if Apple would take gaming a little more
seriously, since Steve Jobs deleted all Gaming DNA in Apple once he returned
from NeXT. And I said I wish John Carmack would comment a bit on Steve Jobs
given he has been on Stage a few times in Keynote, and has surprisingly never
shared any stories since he passed away.

But I think this confirms my suspicious

>Several things over the years made me conclude that, at his core, Steve
didn’t think very highly of games, and always wished they weren’t as important
to his platforms as they turned out to be. I never took it personally.

And it is a little strange since Steve worked at Atari.

~~~
_arvin
I came across this HN comment that might answer your question:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069109)

or you can see Carmack's original tweet here:
[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/993142700374462464](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/993142700374462464)

------
crusso
_The Steve Jobs "hero / shithead" rollercoaster was real_

That's funny. I had a boss at Apple when I did some contracting there in 1999
who told me that Jobs asked him, "You wanna be a hero?" before giving him a
project. My boss told me, "Yep, one day you're a hero, the next day you're a
shithead."

------
redm
I suppose its inevitable that we dissect the lives and actions of "great"
people like Steve Jobs. The fact is that no one is perfect, and those who
usually accomplish great things have fascinating lives and personality flaws.
At the end of the day, you take the good with the bad, its a package deal, and
call it Human.

------
macros
Every time I see one of his posts on facebook.com I cringe and think wistfully
about the .plan days.

------
sg0
About "reality distortion field":
[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distorti...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt)

------
hwestiii
This pretty much confirms my suspicion that Apple is|was not a company I'd
ever want to work at. Making cool stuff might be cool, but I don't want to
sacrifice large chunks of my life for it.

------
r3vo
It seems pretty likely to me that Steve Jobs was a high functioning sociopath.
The line about how his demeanor changed dramatically when Carmack's wife asked
for a favor was indicative to me.

"One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and
he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as
our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone
it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a
suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John
Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full
charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote."

I find sociopaths fascinating, but I would sure never want to work for one. It
must take an incredible amount of calculation and self discipline to keep a
semblance of normality for an incredibly high profile sociopath like Jobs.

On a side note, the late Pieter Hintjens of ZeroMQ wrote an excellent book
about psychopaths available online for free here.

[https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta...](https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta..).

Also want to disclaim that I am not a psychiatrist and my opinion of Job's
sociopathy is only my speculation.

~~~
hellofunk
It appears your link is invalid.

~~~
techer
[https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta...](https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details)

------
agumonkey
I was just giving back the "steve jobs" manga biography (yes..). I know 90% of
it but ... I still read the 200 pages. He's such a special character for
someone who grew up with nascent personal computer era.

------
xenadu02
By all accounts (and I have no personal knowledge here) Steve could be a jerk,
or at least very demanding. Steve was definitely successful.

Being a jerk != being successful!

Having a great product eye and good design sense are excellent traits to
emulate. Having "strong opinions, loosely held" is another great trait to
emulate. Being honest and direct when something isn't good is also a great
trait to emulate. Demanding people do their best is another great trait to
emulate.

Being a jerk (at least under certain circumstances) is orthogonal and
unrelated.

Unfortunately far too many people mistake correlation for causation and think
being a demanding jerk is the key to success. First: you are no Steve Jobs.
Second: that isn't what made him successful.

(Being direct and brutally honest can also come off as being a jerk. We have
lots of pressure to be positive / supportive and avoid social conflict. It is
always easier to say "that's great" or "nice job" than give actual
constructive feedback, especially when the recipients are likely to be
defensive about it. It is critical for startups to avoid this and be brutally
honest with themselves about the product!)

~~~
jccalhoun
Many people seem to love to look up to jerks. Look at the current resident of
the White House for example. I've seen it in academia as well and I don't
understand it. There was someone in the department I got my phd from that I
saw be a total jerk to people for no reason and some people still worshiped
him.

~~~
arvinsim
Probably some primitive instinct that looks up to the alpha of the group.

~~~
jccalhoun
I don't know. That alpha male stuff is mostly bull. And It isn't like all
people who are assholes and have people look up to them are actually good or
"alpha" in any way. And why do some people look at people like this and say,
"fuck that guy?"

------
ProudNounDUzber
yep

------
AdmiralAsshat
Some great anecdotes in there.

As an aside, surely a person of Carmack's stature and knowledge would have a
dedicated blog. I have to wonder if his decision to post so many of these
wonderful stories on Facebook might be due to some "pressure" from his
employer.

~~~
JohnCarmack
Years ago, I felt burned when I wrote several articles for #AltDevBlogADay,
and they vanished. I have much more confidence that what I write on FB won't
vanish. I agree it isn't a great platform for writing, but I only write public
long-form things a few times year, so I don't feel like going to another
platform for it.

~~~
0xfeba
Maybe someone will write a metablogging platform that posts to WordPress,
Facebook, Twitter (in multiple tweets!), Instagram, etc. all with one button.
RAIC, redundant array of inexpensive content.

Actually, I'd be surprised if this didn't already exist.

~~~
gowld
Yes, there is a whole market.

[https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-
at-...](https://www.popsci.com/post-to-all-social-media-accounts-at-once)

[http://everypost.me/](http://everypost.me/)

etc

------
jakear
For those who are unable/unwilling to access Facebook:

John Carmack

Steve Jobs

My wife once asked me “Why do you drop what you are doing when Steve Jobs asks
you to do something? You don’t do that for anyone else.”

It is worth thinking about.

As a teenage Apple computer fan, Jobs and Wozniak were revered figures for me,
and wanting an Apple 2 was a defining characteristic of several years of my
childhood. Later on, seeing NeXT at a computer show just as I was selling my
first commercial software felt like a vision into the future. (But $10k+,
yikes!)

As Id Software grew successful through Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, the
first major personal purchase I made wasn’t a car, but rather a NeXT computer.
It turned out to be genuinely valuable for our software development, and we
moved the entire company onto NeXT hardware.

We loved our NeXTs, and we wanted to launch Doom with an explicit “Developed
on NeXT computers” logo during the startup process, but when we asked, the
request was denied.

Some time after launch, when Doom had begun to make its cultural mark, we
heard that Steve had changed his mind and would be happy to have NeXT branding
on it, but that ship had sailed. I did think it was cool to trade a few emails
with Steve Jobs.

Several things over the years made me conclude that, at his core, Steve didn’t
think very highly of games, and always wished they weren’t as important to his
platforms as they turned out to be. I never took it personally.

When NeXT managed to sort of reverse-acquire Apple and Steve was back in
charge, I was excited by the possibilities of a resurgent Apple with the
virtues of NeXT in a mainstream platform.

I was brought in to talk about the needs of games in general, but I made it my
mission to get Apple to adopt OpenGL as their 3D graphics API. I had a lot of
arguments with Steve.

Part of his method, at least with me, was to deride contemporary options and
dare me to tell him differently. They might be pragmatic, but couldn’t
actually be good. “I have Pixar. We will make something [an API] that is
actually good.”

It was often frustrating, because he could talk, with complete confidence,
about things he was just plain wrong about, like the price of memory for video
cards and the amount of system bandwidth exploitable by the AltiVec
extensions.

But when I knew what I was talking about, I would stand my ground against
anyone.

When Steve did make up his mind, he was decisive about it. Dictates were made,
companies were acquired, keynotes were scheduled, and the reality distortion
field kicked in, making everything else that was previously considered into
obviously terrible ideas.

I consider this one of the biggest indirect impacts on the industry that I
have had. OpenGL never seriously threatened D3D on PC, but it was critical at
Apple, and that meant that it remained enough of a going concern to be the
clear choice when mobile devices started getting GPUs. While long in the tooth
now, it was so much better than what we would have gotten if half a dozen SoC
vendors rolled their own API back at the dawn of the mobile age.

I wound up doing several keynotes with Steve, and it was always a crazy fire
drill with not enough time to do things right, and generally requiring heroic
effort from many people to make it happen at all. I tend to think this was
also a calculated part of his method.

My first impression of “Keynote Steve” was him berating the poor stage hands
over “This Home Depot shit” that was rolling out the display stand with the
new Mac, very much not to his satisfaction. His complaints had a valid point,
and he improved the quality of the presentation by caring about details, but I
wouldn’t have wanted to work for him in that capacity.

One time, my wife, then fiancé, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he
wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our
wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it.
We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a
suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John
Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full
charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote.

When I was preparing an early technology demo of Doom 3 for a keynote in
Japan, I was having a hard time dealing with some of the managers involved
that were insisting that I change the demo because “Steve doesn’t like blood.”
I knew that Doom 3 wasn’t to his taste, but that wasn’t the point of doing the
demo.

I brought it to Steve, with all the relevant people on the thread. He replied
to everyone with:

“I trust you John, do whatever you think is great.”

That goes a long way, and nobody said a thing after that.

When my wife and I later started building games for feature phones (DoomRPG!
Orcs&Elves!), I advocated repeatedly to Steve that an Apple phone could be
really great. Every time there was a rumor that Apple might be working on a
phone, I would refine the pitch to him. Once he called me at home on a Sunday
(How did he even get my number?) to ask a question, and I enthused at length
about the possibilities.

I never got brought into the fold, but I was excited when the iPhone actually
did see the light of day. A giant (for the time) true color display with a
GPU! We could do some amazing things with this!

Steve first talked about application development for iPhone at the some
keynote I was demonstrating the new ID Tech 5 rendering engine on Mac, so I
was in the front row. When he started going on about “Web Apps”, I was
(reasonably quietly) going “Booo!!!”.

After the public cleared out and the rest of us were gathered in front of the
stage, I started urgently going on about how web apps are terrible, and
wouldn’t show the true potential of the device. We could do so much more with
real native access!

Steve responded with a line he had used before: “Bad apps could bring down
cell phone towers.” I hated that line. He could have just said “We aren’t
ready”, and that would have been fine.

I was making some guesses, but I argued that the iPhone hardware and OS
provided sufficient protection for native apps. I pointed at a nearby engineer
and said “Don’t you have an MMU and process isolation on the iPhone now?” He
had a wide eyed look of don’t-bring-me-into-this, but I eventually got a “yes”
out of him.

I said that OS-X was surely being used for things that were more security
critical than a phone, and if Apple couldn’t provide enough security there,
they had bigger problems. He came back with a snide “You’re a smart guy John,
why don’t you write a new OS?” At the time, my thought was, “Fuck you,
Steve.”.

People were backing away from us. If Steve was mad, Apple employees didn’t
want him to associate the sight of them with the experience. Afterwards, one
of the execs assured me that “Steve appreciates vigorous conversation”.

Still deeply disappointed about it, I made some comments that got picked up by
the press. Steve didn’t appreciate that.

The Steve Jobs “hero / shithead” rollercoaster was real, and after riding high
for a long time, I was now on the down side. Someone told me that Steve
explicitly instructed them to not give me access to the early iPhone SDK when
it finally was ready.

I wound up writing several successful iPhone apps on the side (all of which
are now gone due to dropping 32 bit support, which saddens me), and I had many
strong allies inside Apple, but I was on the outs with Steve.

The last iOS product I worked on was Rage for iOS, which I thought set a new
bar for visual richness on mobile, and also supported some brand new features
like TV out. I heard that it was well received inside Apple.

I was debriefing the team after the launch when I got a call. I was busy, so I
declined it. A few minutes later someone came in and said that Steve was going
to call me. Oops.

Everyone had a chuckle about me “hanging up on Steve Jobs”, but that turned
out to be my last interaction with him.

As the public story of his failing health progressed, I started several emails
to try to say something meaningful and positive to part on, but I never got
through them, and I regret it.

I corroborate many of the negative character traits that he was infamous for,
but elements of the path that led to where I am today were contingent on the
dents he left in the universe.

I showed up for him.

~~~
reificator
> _Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted
> “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a
> day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick.
> I didn’t do that keynote._

When I start getting a certain vibe from some people, I start countering
requests with similar but slightly smaller requests. Amazing how so many
people can demand another's time and resources but refuse to return anything
themselves.

Often even making that straight-faced, respectful, comparable request will end
a relationship. It's sad but it must be done.

~~~
twothamendment
I don't find it sad to end a bad relationship. If someone only intends to
"use" me and has nothing to offer, that isn't much of a loss.

~~~
gowld
It's a bit sad to face the the reality than to blissfully believe the person
is a friend.

------
dingo_bat
Steve Jobs sounds like an amazing asshole! I wonder if all celebrity CEOs
(Bezos, Gates, Zuck, etc.) are like this in private interactions.

~~~
wilsonnb
Probably not, at least not as much. There's a reason Steve Jobs has always
been notorious for this sort of behavior.

~~~
gowld
All of those CEOs are famous (and more) for being assholes. What made Steve
Jobs different is that he also inspired a bizarre sort of love -- People want
to _be_ Gates/Zuck/Bezos, but no one dreams of _working for_ them. And no one
has a religious zeal for evangelizing their those CEOs' transparent marketing
lies like they do for Jobs'.

------
horsecaptin
Anyone else notice how it is impossible to select and copy text?

~~~
AlexeyBrin
That's because the link points to the mobile version, try the desktop one
[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825...](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825593223&id=100006735798590).
I can select and copy the text just fine.

------
ProudNounDUzber
Now I just want a God of War game with Steve as Kratos and John as Atreus.

------
staunch
Steve Jobs and John Carmack are very similar people in a lot of ways.

They're both from lower-class backgrounds, incredibly smart, had serious
personality problems as children that could have landed them in prison as
adults.

They're both entirely "self-made" and spent their entire lives with (almost)
singular focus, to the point of becoming the best in the world at what they
chose to work on.

My impression is that John Carmack has avoided being CEO during his career
because he knows it would involve him becoming more like Steve Jobs than he
wants to be.

Could John Carmack have made an even bigger positive impact in the world if he
had gone in Steve Jobs' direction? How much would he have had to change as a
person?

I suspect a lot of people would come think of him as an "asshole" if he chose
to get his hands dirty with the work of a CEO. Maybe the world would be _even
richer_ than it is now but at some cost to John Carmack and (perhaps) others.

In any case, they're both beautiful examples of the greatness and weakness of
the partially-evolved primate we call Human.

~~~
epicureanideal
Citation needed on Steve being lower class. Lower compared to what?

Based on the little I know about how he grew up, it seems he was more middle
class than lower, and also happened to grow up in the best place to grow up to
rise with the computer industry. Middle class kids in Iowa don't live 20
minutes from Stanford, for example. So, I'd say "middle class with unusually
good opportunities".

I'm really not trying to say he didn't accomplish a lot, because he did, but
let's not pretend he was seriously disadvantaged.

Carmack seems to have more claim to being disadvantaged, although I have no
idea if he is interested in making such a claim. According to some articles I
just read he was arrested while trying to steal his first computer, and spent
a year in juvenile prison, which generally doesn't happen to affluent people.

~~~
gowld
[https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-
Carma...](https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-Carmack-
Answers)

John Carmack Answers:

""" ... stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking
(nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite
(sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades,
etc.

I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about
being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all
my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first
offence[1] after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. """

[1] Per wikipedia, the offense was: burning through a window, grand theft of
computers, and then presenting as autistic to the psychiatric evaluator.

From my outsider view, I get the impression that Carmack "grew up" into a
relative well-adjusted adult with respect for other humans, but Steve Jobs
never did.

