What? Ok, now it gets ridiculous. You only know *afterwards* if your idea wasn't the way you expected. Given that this is industry and business we are talking about and not science where you can spend as much money and time as you wish you even have to ship if your expectations aren't met. It is not smart to say that smart people don't make mistakes.

Well. He is probably completely right, this guy is far from a village idiot, he knows his stuff, I doubt anyone on this forum is as smart as he is when it comes to video game engine technology.
The work he did on game engines well over a decade ago is still going to be powering and thus influencing Next Generation games, like Call of Duty and Titanfall (Uses the Source Engine which stems from Quake.)

There are many rendering techniques which we hadn't seen used last generation, both for improved performance and/or image quality.

Like you said, developers have to realize that money limits them and the whole game development process. The game engine has to be effecient for  developers to allow the game itself to even be profitable or at least break even. From the beginning, he should have been able to realize how difficult it would be to develop a game using his approach. You wouldn't need to build a whole engine before figuring that out. The engine he designed required that almost all the games assets for a particular area would have to share the same texture file. That's insanely inefficient and he could have realized that before fully committing to the engine. I'm not saying he's not smart, Im just saying that he may not be among smartest anymore.

I see the point you want to make but you are looking at it with a way too simplified view. Engines and performance rely on so many variables that perhaps tests you did before don't play out well if all parts come together. This happens all the time in software development and especially in time-critical programs like games. But I guess if you want to argue about the Rage enginge being efficient you should try to contact him personally. Show him where his approach is inefficient and wait for the answer you probably won't ever understand. This is not meant offensive but truthfully. I know a lot of smart people in game development and never heard that anyone dared to say he is not among the smartest, especially only relying on the fact that Rage did not what is meant to do.

I actually have to retract my comment about the efficiency of designing a game using his engine. The engine, from what I remember watching long ago, was supposedly difficult for developers but that may not be the case. I may have mixed up ID tech 5 with another engine.

However, everything else I said still applies. His engine is not the best. I would say the Cryengine is loads more impressive, especially from a technical capability standpoint. Even till this day, the original Crysis engine still holds it's own against any other engine out there. The other games I mentioned earlier are also more impressive than the engine that powers Rage.

So to conclude my point, all I'm saying is that from looking at what Carmack has accomplished compared to the other coders out there within the last 10 years, he really hasn't shown us anything to prove that he's at the top. And so consequently, I don't think he deserves to be regarded as such. I am not saying that his accomplishments in the past weren't impressive and should be forgotten. I am just saying that right now other coders probably have more to contribute to the advancement of 3d technology.