Re:John Carmack: Best Programming Setup and IDE – Lex Fridma...
by psadauskas on Saturday August 13, 2022 @01:46PM
(#32452090)
>in 1995, Carmack spent $9,995 on one the first 1080p monitors… It provided a 28" screen with 1920x1080 @ 85Hz… Essentially, Carmack was able to trade $9,995 of 1995 money for a monitor that put him decades into the future.
“Decades” is a bit hyperbolic. I got a 22” that would do 1920x1440@80 for under $1000 in 1999. I’m also skeptical of that non-4:3 resolution quoted.
Yes! There's a post we wrote on precisely this phenomenon with John Carmack as the main character that you might find interesting.[1]
TLDR: There was a time when people were willing to spend (literally) tens of thousands of dollars on ultra-premium hardware in order to compute on hardware a few years ahead of the market.
For example, John Carmack spent $23K for a NeXT workstation on which he made Wolfeinstein 3D, Doom I & II, and Quake. He also spent ~$10K on the world's first 1080p monitor, which he used to program the Quake trilogy.
[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/paying-for-productivity/