Carmack has consistently pushed forward multiple industries on multiple fronts, and remains to this day a far better programmer than any I've ever worked with. He revolutionized computer gaming while living the life just because he loves it. He's not famous because he has Ferraris; his Ferraris are famous because they're his.
He doesn't need anyone to set him up with an annuity--maybe because his love was more mainstream than theirs, or maybe because his skill was far greater than theirs--but that in no way diminishes what he has accomplished or his motivations for accomplishing it.
Definitely not coasting.
Carmack, Gates, Zuck and Woz are the real deal. Saying they aren't because others toil in obscurity is some hopeless romanticism about hacker culture. A heart warmer, maybe?, but not justified.
Just because financial outcomes are not matched to your hacker ideal doesn't invalidate either approach. The rich famous hackers were also good at business and publicity. Not everyone wants that or is good at all three, which is the case with Dwarf Fortress.
Money is not the scorecard. Read the article. That point is addressed.
Perhaps it's an illustration that it's often not fancy maths and algorithms that pay, but rather being in the right place at the right time with the right product. That said, there are instances like Google and Carmack where it really was the algorithms that made the difference.
Way more impressive than sticking together a few perlscripts for a social networking website. Zuckerberg wasn't the main programmer behind Facebook, btw.
wherein Joel Spolsky was reviewed by Bill Gates. It is pretty clear the man had serious technical chops.
No doubt many of them continue to do great technical work that constitutes "great hacking" in anybody's book. But that's not why (by and large) people buy the books and become fans.
If you are focusing on the technical skill of hackery then you are going down the wrong trail. I'm talking about living the life of hacking, as most hackers understand and would actually practice it, as opposed to being a famous hacker. Let's face it, odds are you'll never be a billionaire with your own rocket company. But you just might spend 20 years of your life working on a pet project. These guys are our guys. They're us.
In some respects, I think that continuing to do what you love even after you have 'fuck you money' is one of the strongest indicators of a persons passions. Carmack could have stopped programming games years ago, yet he continues to innovate and push boundaries. For him, the rocket company IS his pet project and is just as brilliant an example of hacking as anything else. Both Gates and Jobs could have retired to a private island (or even private archipelago) years ago, instead both continued to work at their passions long past necessary. And now Gates has a new pet project, it just happens to have a lot more money and publicity than Dwarf Fortress.
Put another way: it's possible to praise his behavior without pissing on someone else.
Disagree. Read up on him.
Woz is a real hacker, if not one of the best ever.
Long excerpt from his amazing Founders at Work interview.
"This was two weeks away and Mike Markkula said yes. So that was my motivation. I always had these little fictitious motivations that motivated me and got me to do such great work. So I sat down and designed the floppy disk, and Randy Wigginton (he was the guy just out of high school) and I came in every single day including Christmas and New Years for 2 weeks. I came in every single day leading up to, I think it was January 3 or 5, when we went off to Las Vegas. I almost had this floppy disk done.
I got it to where it was writing data on a track, reading the data on a track. Then I got it to where it was reading the data in the right byte positions. Then I got it to work with shifting tracks, and we wanted a simple program where we would say "run checkbook" or "run color math" and it would run the programs that were stored on the floppy disk. So we went off to Las Vegas, and Randy and I worked all night and we got it done to where it was working. At the very end, it was 6:00 a.m. and I said, 'We have to back up this floppy disk." We had one good disk that we prepared with the data hand-massaged to get it just right. So I stuck it in the floppy and wrote a little program, and I typed in some data and I said "read track 0," stuck in the other floppy and said "write track 0, read track 1, write track 1." There were 36 tracks—I had to switch floppies back and forth.
When I got done, I'm looking at these 2 floppies that look just the same. And I decided that I might have written onto the good one from the bad, and I did. So I had lost it all. I went back to my hotel room. I slept for a while. I got up about 10:00 a.m. or so. I sat down and, out of my head and my listings, recreated everything, got it working again, and we showed it at the show. It was a huge hit. Everybody was saying, "Oh my God, Apple has a floppy!" It just looked beautiful, plugged into a slot on our computer. We were able to say "run color math," and it just runs instantly. It was a change in time.
But the real eureka moment for me was the very first time I ever read data back. I wrote it on the floppy, which was easy, but read it back, got it right. I just died."
The whole interview (and book) are inspiring:
"My whole life was basically trying to optimize things. You don't just save parts, but every time you save parts you save on complexity and reliability, the amount of time it takes to understand something. And how good you can build it without errors and bugs and flaws.
Livingston: You were designing all of these different types of computers during high school at home, for fun?
Wozniak: Yes, because I could never build one. Not only that, but I would design one and design it over and over and over—each one of the computers—because new chips would come out. I would take the new chips and redesign some computer I'd done before because I'd come up with a clever idea about how I could save 2 more chips. "I'll do it in 42 chips instead of 44 chips."
What do you do in your spare time, if I may ask politely?
Woz was as brilliant as technical brilliance could possibly ever be, though.
First, these guys are the real hackers. Not Carmack, Woz, Bill, or Zuck, or all the super-cool guys that made the bucks and then coasted (technically). These guys are living the life just because they love it. They're a much better representation of the inner hacker in all of us than those stories of riches and fame. I got the impression they would continue doing this no matter what their financial circumstances.
Second, they've done their time. Somebody should set them up with an annuity so they can a) continue, b) learn to live without worrying about money, and c) tell stories to kids 40 years from now about how it all came together
Third, this article left me gobsmacked. I'm left with one conclusion: this is art. If you're collecting these crayon receipts? Save them. They're going to be worth something one day.
Of course, just like the game plays out, it might all amount to nothing. If I had to bet about the value of their work, I'd say it drops off short-term (next 20 years) then becomes super valuable around 2030 or so. This seems to be the pattern with semi-famous labors of love with cult followings. Seriously. Save whatever you can get from these guys.
Very cool story.