What was he working on at ms? I watched a video about his snes port of doom, amazing stuff (and slightly depressing know I'll never be any where near that level).
> (and slightly depressing know I'll never be any where near that level).
Randy is very persistent. That Quake demo was 2 years in the making, and that was after he'd already spent over a decade writing low level code.
Highly optimized code is a matter of time, time, and more time. It is a thousand little improvements that get you towards your goal.
If you want to learn to write that type of low level code, and it is very rewarding, Pick up an embedded board like an ESP32 and go have at it.