John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) “I first read this book about Seymour Cray and the supercomputer space a couple d” — TopicDigg

I first read this book about Seymour Cray and the supercomputer space a couple decades ago. Rereading it now, with some big-company experience and after the extended-and-disappointing Rage development at Id makes me feel even more kinship with Seymour. The ability to start each engineering project with a clean sheet of paper and build something new and incompatible can, given the right people, be magical and move things forward rapidly. But if you are successful, eventually you reach a point where that is no longer the winning strategy, and incremental, compatible changes are optimal for larger goals. You either need to adapt to that, or move to another problem space that is more ripe for disruptive engineering innovation. The fact that Cray was still sharp and working hard at 71 is also inspiring!