Over the next 18 months, the war was fought in code. ATI and NVIDIA, bitter rivals, had to agree on a single shading language specification. Every comma, every keyword like uniform and varying , was a battleground. Kilgard wrote the first compiler for NVIDIA’s hardware. His counterparts at ATI did the same.
OpenGL 2.0 was a pivotal release enabling programmable graphics via GLSL, shifting graphics development toward shader-based techniques. It remains relevant for understanding the evolution of real-time rendering and for supporting legacy applications, but for new projects targeting modern hardware and advanced effects, later OpenGL versions or newer APIs (Vulkan, Direct3D 12, Metal) are recommended. opengl 20
And that, ironically, is the most beautiful kind of software engineering there is. Over the next 18 months, the war was fought in code