DOOM Turned Thirty

I can understand how a VGA signal works when you give me a schematic and I’ll probably be able to program something for it. I can understand single-threaded CPU architectures and can probably write assembly or an emulator for it. But I have a lot of trouble understanding the internals of the digital 4K HDMI/USB-C output port, and even if you give me three months, I will never grasp even the basics of what’s under the hood of modern CPU chips. That’s a shame.

In that sense, I’m a bit worried that we’re over-engineering everything just because we can. Something that a single person could understand in 1993 now requires a dedicated team with ten years of experience.

On the one hand, I bet the DOOM team felt the same way thirty years ago about the confusing and complex systems of the mid-1990s.

But on the other, I definitely sympathize with the author. I feel spoiled that I was able to mostly learn how to program websites by right-clicking and viewing source.

Have you ever tried doing that on a modern website? It’s complete gibberish. Everything is obfuscated behind embedded, compressed Javascript libraries and CSS styling that is intentionally complex to prevent things like ad blocking tech from discovering which <div> blocks to hide.

Regardless, we should all wish a very happy birthday to DOOM.

I am currently looking at my Nalgene bottle of stickers and fondly looking at the Chex Quest one.

Also, I will never forget iddqd, idkfa, and idbehold.