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Comment by anton_gogolev | Hacker News Reader

Not to diminish Carmack's significance and genius, but, from waht I can tell from the first minutes of the interview, he knew he was going to be awarded, so je had plenty of time to prepare and rehearse his -- very inspiring, I should say -- speech.

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For something like a decade (2004~2005 until 2013), Carmack gave a fluent hours-long speech/discussion/brain-dump at QuakeCon. I doubt a few minutes's speech is something he needs "plenty of time to prepare and rehearse" for at this point.

Recent examples:

2h50 2013 QuakeCon keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M

2h20 2014 SMU talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_oTvUl88hs

1h30 2014 Oculus Connect keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqzpAbK9qFk

His 2013 keynote where he touched on functional programming is what inspired me to attempt learning and writing a game server in Haskell.

Honestly all of his talks are this good. He's really an incredible speaker, and it seems like he mostly speaks from an outline, not a script.

Watch one of his keynotes. He sits down with some bullet points on a tablet and then talks for three hours:

https://youtu.be/Uooh0Y9fC_M

Carmack's talks are mind-blowing, he just talks off the cuff fluently for two-three hours and it's consistently interesting, it's completely insane. Here's one he gave at SMU in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOzkUKJCxTw

Even with prep writing a speech that good isn't easy. Easier sure, but that's like the difference between a high wire act and a high wire act with bears waiting to eat your corpse.

That's fair, but I'm willing to bet that anyone who has a chance of receiving an award is well-prepared to give a speech. Executing the speech is difficult whether you are ready or not, and Carmack not only spoke well/fluently, but had a great message that was meaningful because it came from him and also, because it can resonate with anyone really.

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