I think of that quote as being in the context of the sorts of 'music box' programs people were writing in the 1970's. This little gear also has a cam that opera

I think of that quote as being in the context of the sorts of 'music box' programs people were writing in the 1970's. This little gear also has a cam that operated the ballerina's arm. It's the sort of thing you do when you need to stuff a FORTRAN compiler in 32k of memory. If you write your code right then refactoring it to use a different more whatever algorithm should be if not easy at least 'not hard'.