Programming for Gaming and the Immediate Feedback Loop | 2min snip from The Tim Ferriss Show

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#681: Doom Legend John Romero — The Path to Prolific Innovation and Making 130+ Games, How to Find the Soul of the Work, Audacious Ambition, and Building in Monk Mode

The Tim Ferriss Show

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Programming for Gaming and the Immediate Feedback Loop

Gaming was the initial motivation to learn coding, specifically to create arcade games./nThe programming experience back then was extremely immediate and allowed for fast iteration and learning./nThe iterative nature of programming kept the speaker interested and motivated to improve their coding skills./nLearning programming involved building on previous knowledge, understanding keywords, and problem-solving./nThe speaker realized that with the right words and descriptions, they could make anything happen in programming, like putting something on the screen with 'print'.

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Computer and video game legend John Romero (@romero) has designed and published more than 130 games since his first sale at the age of 16. A teenage programming prodigy, his major achievements include co-inventing a series of revolutionary computer games—DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein 3-D, and Commander Keen—that launched the industry’s most popular genre, the first-person shooter.

The memoir DOOM GUY: Life in First Person is his first book.

Please enjoy!

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[07:39] Childhood.

[11:30] Aggressor Squadron.

[14:55] John’s first exposure to computers and coding.

[21:34] Early innovations in 3D gaming.

[26:01] The id Software team.

[28:00] Side-scrolling games.

[30:41] Developing 13 games in one year. How?

[37:28] Designing with movable and removable parts in mind.

[42:45] Warning the world of its inevitable DOOM.

[53:04] Hyperthymesia.

[59:49] Working on two games at once.

[1:02:34] When John realized DOOM would be a hit.