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> on home computers like C64s [...], everything was simple Simple? I take you've never had to implement a division on the 6502. Or write complex code due to th

• GuB-42 3y ago
  I didn't mean that using or programming the machine was simple, far from it. But the machine itself was simple. If some pixel doesn't light up right on your C64, you can follow the path from your code to the electron beam in the monitor. That entire path could fit in a single person head. It is a puzzle but you have all the pieces in front of you. Now, it is not a puzzle anymore, you just call some drawText() function and then some magic happens and there is text on the screen. If the magic doesn't happen, monitoring the output of your GPU won't help you, there is too much in between, some of it deliberately obfuscated. So you try random stuff that don't make much sense except that because of your experience, you know they work. Or more likely, someone with experience already did it, posted it on StackOverflow, and you found it using Google.