Years ago I had a gig writing some “Business Basic” stuffs. I was teamed up with a rather “brilliant” programmer...

Years ago I had a gig writing some “Business Basic” stuffs. I was teamed up with a rather “brilliant” programmer with a strange work flow..

He would sit at his computer.. for half to ¾’s of the day.. and play doom / quake / wolfenstine 3D (he was really into the FPS). when he had enough, He’d fire up the editor and just type. At the end of the day, whatever he wrote.. was gold.

We had a new account manager start with the company that walked in on him playing one morning and in dealing with her, was not very polite.

She complained to the CEO that “one of those programmers isn’t doing any work at all but playing those violent video games”. To which the CEO replied to her “YOU DIDN’T DISTURB HIM DID YOU!?!?”.

The games helped him think. He designed, wrote, tested and debugged all of the code in his head while he was playing. Once he was done, it was just a matter of brain dumping and getting it all out.