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John Carmack

Software engineer and id Software co-founder

A software engineer and id Software co-founder associated with the technology behind Doom and Quake, and a former Oculus CTO. His original posts distinguish a recommendation from technical reading context.

Recommendations sourcedAuthorship kept separateBooks about kept separate

Software Technology

0Authored

0About

1Recommended books

Books John Carmack recommends, documented so far

Each book appears once; every source record remains linked to its evidence and the canonical book profile.

Software Artificial Intelligence

The Little Book of Deep Learning

by François Fleuret · 2023

Why this author is included

François Fleuret · Book author

Documented citation: Carmack praises this short book as a useful bridge from a vague understanding of neural networks to technical practice.

Favorable reader-facing technical guidance in his own public post. The current author-hosted update is not asserted as his endorsed edition.

Documented citation · Recommended

Evidence details

John Carmack on The Little Book of Deep Learning

This source documents the book relationship, but the displayed text is a catalog summary rather than a verbatim quote.

John Carmack · 2023-12-13 · accessed 2026-10-01

social · Own public reading recommendation

Carmack’s post links to the author’s free-book page: https://fleuret.org/francois/lbdl.html. The author warns about unauthorized commercial copies. Later updates are not asserted as Carmack’s endorsed edition.

Open source

Documented mentions and citations

These documented records are useful context, but they are not counted as direct recommendations.

Software Engineering

The Book of CP-System

by Fabien Sanglard · 2022

Why this author is included

Fabien Sanglard · Book author

Documented citation: Carmack describes learning about arcade star-field hardware from Sanglard’s book.

Mentioned technical reading context, not an instruction to readers or a recommendation.

Documented citation · Mentioned

Evidence details

John Carmack on The Book of CP-System

This source documents the book relationship, but the displayed text is a catalog summary rather than a verbatim quote.

John Carmack · 2022-12-02 · accessed 2026-10-01

social · Own public technical reading mention

Carmack describes learning a technical detail from this book. This reading mention is kept separate from recommendations.

Open source