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+---
+title: Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition
+author: Michael Abrash
+date: '1997-07-01'
+identifier:
+- scheme: ISBN
+  text: 1576101746
+publisher: The Coriolis Group
+category: 'Web and Software Development: Game Development,Web and Software Development:
+  Graphics and Multimedia Development'
+---
+
+# Foreword
+
+I got my start programming on Apple II computers at school, and almost
+all of my early work was on the Apple platform. After graduating, it
+quickly became obvious that I was going to have trouble paying my rent
+working in the Apple II market in the late eighties, so I was forced to
+make a very rapid move into the Intel PC environment.
+
+What I was able to pick up over several years on the Apple, I needed to
+learn in the space of a few months on the PC.
+
+The biggest benefit to me of actually making money as a programmer was
+the ability to buy all the books and magazines I wanted. I bought a lot.
+I was in territory that I new almost nothing about, so I read
+*everything* that I could get my hands on. Feature articles, editorials,
+even advertisements held information for me to assimilate.
+
+John Romero clued me in early to the articles by Michael Abrash. The
+good stuff. Graphics hardware. Code optimization. Knowledge and wisdom
+for the aspiring developer. They were even fun to read. For a long time,
+my personal quest was to find a copy of Michael's first book, *Zen of
+Assembly Language.* I looked in every bookstore I visited, but I never
+did find it. I made do with the articles I could dig up.
+
+I learned the dark secrets of the EGA video controller there, and
+developed a few neat tricks of my own. Some of those tricks became the
+basis for the Commander Keen series of games, which launched id
+Software.
+
+A year or two later, after Wolfenstein-3D, I bumped into Michael (in a
+virtual sense) for the first time. I was looking around on M&T Online, a
+BBS run by the Dr. Dobb's publishers before the Internet explosion, when
+I saw some posts from the man himself. We traded email, and for a couple
+months we played tag-team gurus on the graphics forum before Doom's
+development took over my life.
+
+A friend of Michael's at his new job put us back in touch with each
+other after Doom began to make its impact, and I finally got a chance to
+meet up with him in person.
+
+I talked myself hoarse that day, explaining all the ins and outs of Doom
+to Michael and an interested group of his coworkers. Every few days
+afterwards, I would get an email from Michael asking for an elaboration
+on one of my points, or discussing an aspect of the future of graphics.
+
+Eventually, I popped the question—I offered him a job at id. "Just
+think: no reporting to anyone, an opportunity to code all day, starting
+with a clean sheet of paper. A chance to do *the right thing* as a
+programmer." It didn't work. I kept at it though, and about a year later
+I finally convinced him to come down and take a look at id. I was
+working on Quake.
+
+Going from Doom to Quake was a tremendous step. I knew where I wanted to
+end up, but I wasn't at all clear what the steps were to get there. I
+was trying a huge number of approaches, and even the failures were
+teaching me a lot. My enthusiasm must have been contagious, because he
+took the job.
+
+Much heroic programming ensued. Several hundred thousand lines of code
+were written. And rewritten. And rewritten. And rewritten.
+
+In hindsight, I have plenty of regrets about various aspects of Quake,
+but it is a rare person that doesn't freely acknowledge the technical
+triumph of it. We nailed it. Sure, a year from now I will have probably
+found a new perspective that will make me cringe at the clunkiness of
+some part of Quake, but at the moment it still looks pretty damn good to
+me.
+
+I was very happy to have Michael describe much of the Quake technology
+in his ongoing magazine articles. We learned a lot, and I hope we
+managed to teach a bit.
+
+When a non-programmer hears about Michael's articles or the source code
+I have released, I usually get a stunned "WTF would you do that for???"
+look.
+
+They don't get it.
+
+Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow
+programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can,
+because I'm in it for the love of programming. The Ferraris are just
+gravy, honest!
+
+This book contains many of the original articles that helped launch my
+programming career. I hope my contribution to the contents of the later
+articles can provide similar stepping stones for others.
+
+—*John Carmack*\
+ id Software