Answered October 3, 2020 · Upvoted by Timothy Johnson, PhD, Computer Science

I’ve seen a great many Computer Scientists talked about, and I think many are ultra talented. But I’d like to throw a name into the hat of who I consider to be (arguably) the best programmer of our time, as the question goes.



John Carmack

He pretty much defined doing a lot with a little in the gaming industry. For those unfamiliar, he was the co-founder and lead programmer for id Software - Wikipedia

The depth of cleverness and efficiency that went into games and engines sort of one after another (notably Doom and Quake) is just staggering. Doing everything from the engine, graphics, and with quake, the tcp/ip layer.

I know more than one person who went into software specifically because of inspiration from Carmack.

There is more to read about Carmack than would fit in a single answer, but there’s a ton of links in his John Carmack - Wikipedia page. From the games, to some of the algorithms he wrote, he was just absolutely irreplaceable. A truly stellar programmer.

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princejude:
Answered October 3, 2020 · Upvoted by Timothy Johnson, PhD, Computer Science

I’ve seen a great many Computer Scientists talked about, and I think many are ultra talented. But I’d like to throw a name into the hat of who I consider to be (arguably) the best programmer of our time, as the question goes.



John Carmack

He pretty much defined doing a lot with a little in the gaming industry. For those unfamiliar, he was the co-founder and lead programmer for id Software - Wikipedia

The depth of cleverness and efficiency that went into games and engines sort of one after another (notably Doom and Quake) is just staggering. Doing everything from the engine, graphics, and with quake, the tcp/ip layer.

I know more than one person who went into software specifically because of inspiration from Carmack.

There is more to read about Carmack than would fit in a single answer, but there’s a ton of links in his John Carmack - Wikipedia page. From the games, to some of the algorithms he wrote, he was just absolutely irreplaceable. A truly stellar programmer.

stop comparism

Being a computer scientist does not make you a great programmer. Take note.

They should have said the best game programmer, not the best programmer of our time. If he knows how to code games, does he know how to code other types of programming.

Na boss dey code game

princejude:
They should have said the best game programmer, not the best programmer of our time. If he knows how to code games, does he know how to code other types of programming.

what he does, his ability is limitless.


Do you know how many areas of programming video games touch?

John carmack's still learning

Look up Terry Davis , Fabricio Bellard , Brian kerningham , members of the elite hacker group known as cdc , George hotz


This guy's are mini gods when it comes to programming

This is rubbish. There's no way you can know who is the greatest because you can't compile or tally all the programmers in the world.
This guy you posted about might not even make top 1000 in an open contest in India

That he's your favourite doesn't make him the GOAT.
Besides, nobody has heard of his most recent milestone since about a decade ago.