I remember attending the first HOPE conference in 1994. Shocked, but understand, to see it is now $170 to attend (unless you hack admission?);) I started in 19

I remember attending the first HOPE conference in 1994. Shocked, but understand, to see it is now $170 to attend (unless you hack admission?);) I started in 1978 on a Commodore PET 2001 with a cassette drive to load and store programs, and using PEEK and POKE commands. I moved on to Amiga, PC, Macs running Minix, Linux and the usual suspects. You were always low-level then, and I loved creating tunes on my Vic-20 and Amiga 500. The demoscene came along and inspired me to push my 6502 and 286/386 assembly skills to squeeze as much as possible out of my system's resources. I never joined the demoscene, but only created at home back in the days of my old 300 baud modem (2400 baud modems were over $500). I think this early wonder with low-level, and being crafty, is why I think I find myself attracted to languages (like forth, CToy, the TCC compiler, J, and even assembly) amongst the bloat of Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. However, I do like Zig/Rust for low-level. One-line C code to produce music from the command line? You bet; watch and listen to bisqwit. [1] The demoscene produces some truly entrancing artwork, an acid trip manifested in pixels. I have great respect for the sole creators and creative teams alike that make such spectacles. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KLnN0GczI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KLnN0GczI