Why We Don’t Ship Software as Fast as We Used To

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Id software—the company that produced Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and other popular video games in the nineties—has a reputation for shipping fast. Total development time for Wolfenstein 3D was half a year; the first alpha version of Doom was playable after two months; the networked-mode for Doom took two weeks. Remarkably fast—anecdotally, much faster than most software projects today. (Some of these stories are outlined in John Romero’s memoir Doom Guy and David Kushner’s Masters of Doom.)

I found this tweet commenting on Romero’s Doom Guy very interesting:

Stefan Reinalter@molecularmusingHalfway through this book, I'm constantly amazed by how fast the early id Software guys got things done and games released.Can't help but think that modern day SW dev has become bloated, overengineered, and slow, compared to earlier days.Wonder how @romero feels about that? September 5th 2023, 10:41am EST13 Retweets242 Likes

The author of the tweet

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Why We Don’t Ship Software as Fast as We Used To

Sponsored By: Summit

Thanks to our Sponsor: Summit

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