You’re probably surprised I haven’t mention “Code Complete” or “Pragmatic Programmer” or any of those books you’ve read reviews of in numerous programming blogs. Those are great books by the way, and should take the time to read at least some of them.
Masters of Doom will not teach you how to be a better programmer, it won’t preach the best practices of software development. Because it’s not a book about programming at all! It’s a biographic tale of two great programmers, John Carmack and John Romero, how their passion for playing and creating games drove them to achieve superb mastery at programming and produce legendary games, like Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D and so on.
Neither Carmack, nor Romero had what you would call a healthy upbringing. They were from broken families, at odds with their surroundings. Playing games was one of the few things they would enjoy, and eventually they started learning how to create them. They had dreams of making it big in the gaming industry, creating and publishing under their own names.
These two brilliant minds met each other at their youth as coworkers. Each admired the unique qualities in the other one. Carmack was more adept in technical details of game development, while Romero had a knack for the creative direction. Together, along with some like minded programmers and designers, they founded id Software, and set out to produce hugely popular franchises. Not only were these games commercially successful, they achieved technological breakthrough in PC gaming. Commander Keen was the first side-scrolling game in PC. Wolfenstein 3D had immersive 3D graphics never before seen in games, And Doom set the bar even higher. These were the games that drove innovation in graphics programming, and established gaming as a part of pop culture.
So what do you, a programmer, are likely to gain from reading this book? The simple message that this book conveys, is that if want to succeed in the field of programming(or any other field) you must have passion for what you do. No amount of training would make you a better programmer if you lack this key ingredient. If you are a start-up founder(or work in a start-up) and have started your journey in the scary world of entrepreneurship, this book will prove to be inspirational to you.
So if you are a programmer who is looking for something to get him inspired, I strongly urge you to read it. Or read it anyway, it’s fun.
Glorified Geek 