5 ms·

This is the Rube Goldberg Machine of programming.

• agumonkey 10y ago
  I wonder if early programming projects weren't like this. Abusing low level components to do things they weren't really meant to do.
  • white-flame 10y ago
    That accurately describes the Commodore 64 scene. Games, demos, disk speeders, and copy protection particularly abused the hardware. Many games couldn't run without hardware glitches from the video chip, and undefined CPU opcodes which end up executing some weird fusion of otherwise normal instructions were often exploited to save a few necessary cycles here or there.
    • agumonkey 10y ago
      True; but I meant even 50s computer projects. They were trying to make memory out of mercury acoustic waves .. feels so hackish in a way
      • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Wait, was that real? I thought Stephenson made that up...
        • agumonkey 10y ago
          Unless there's some misunderstanding: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mercury+delay+line&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mercury+delay+line&ia=web