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Creative limitations would be a big reason. I'm sure someone else can explain it better, but being forced into a far smaller scope than you'd usually work in ma

Creative limitations would be a big reason. I'm sure someone else can explain it better, but being forced into a far smaller scope than you'd usually work in makes you have to consider the impact of every small thing. Its not just a programming thing, people do the same with music, art, any medium. Its also quite nice as it acts as a levelling of the playing field. The limitations of modern tech are far outside the reach of most solo-devs, but put 100 devs on it, and you could reach it (and therefore create something more technically impressive). With those limitations on, a solo dev can far more conceivably create something technically impressive. Unless it has real world consequences (eg you can export to a gameboy ROM or something), I don't really care if its based on an actual retro system or a fantasy one, they achieve those same results.

deaddabe 4y ago
Having to program down to the bit (not byte) sparks a little something for me. I feel proudness in the craft, even if this is a bit (pun!) far frow nowadays’s constraints. I just learned the hex decades (1, 16, 256, 4k, 64k, 1M, 16M, 256M, 4G…) and now if I need to generate a 1M empty file I know that `head /dev/zero -c $((0x100000)) > 1M.bin` would do without having to multiply 1024 three times. This kind of little things. :) Nevertheless, it can still be useful if you write Linux device drivers or some other low-level tasks. Microcontroller programming, too, but without having to buy them in the first place (MCU shortage…).