Reading John Carmack's thought processes to approaching, addressing, and moving on from individual challenges is so fun and refreshing to me. Granted, the matter-of-fact tone is inherently humble, but it does seem like a tone of making the complex sound simple, intrinsically for the audience's benefit. Just a line like "unfortunate waste of memory...but it gives me the timing control I need" is a succinct demonstration of trade-offs and explanation without, well, seeming to have many outside constraints - well, I mean there's the pursuit of the functioning program, sure, but I get the sense freedom in this environment is used studiously.