ha! Yeah, I guess that's the secret -- just do something for a 10,000 hours and it comes naturally. But I still remember the learning process "X and Y index, wh

ha! Yeah, I guess that's the secret -- just do something for a 10,000 hours and it comes naturally. But I still remember the learning process "X and Y index, what's that good for? and why do I need an accumulator? Stack? flags? Rotate?" but once I put that first pixel on the screen and made it move, I was hooked. what's funny to me is the idea that a person can go do something else for 10 or 20 years (C, C++, DotNet, robotics) and barely touch a line of assembly, yet it's all still there waiting. Maybe it's because game development in 6502asm was at the start of my career and I was so passionate about it, but some things are just ingrained. Even stuff like favoring zero-page memory (the first 256 bytes of memory from $0000 to $00FF) because it can be accessed in one cycle instead of two like indexed, offset or direct access memory. Later, moving to the 68000 family felt like a high-level language (Multiply AND divide opcodes -- you mean I don't have to write a multiply routine?) But having a asm background has ruined me in some ways. Learning C was straightforward enough, and the jump to C++ felt very natural. However, I find modern languages repulsively inefficient (e.g. Ruby) and struggle with functional programming (Lisp, Elixir). Python feels reminiscent to Applesoft BASIC so while I have to look up the syntax every time, it still feels normal. somewhat related, since I'm rambling... I recently read "Making 8-bit arcade games in C" by Steven Hugg and found it brought on a strong dose of nostalgia. It's a really ambitious book that attempts to give a feel for programming various 8bit game platforms, and covers some surprisingly advanced techniques and some basic stuff that schools may not event each any longer (two's complement, run-length encoding, interrupts, etc.). The book has some rough edges and wanders a bit but the good parts easily outweigh the defects. It achieves its aim of Speaking of game programming -- how about meta-game programming? programming in a game. I bought a game called TIS-100, and found it to be loads of fun in the same way a mechanic might buy a derelict car and restore it to new condition, or an EE might fiddle around with an old tube radio just for fun. The premise is that an uncle dies suddenly/disappears and leaves a prototype computer behind. Hidden in this computer are some signal processing circuits that hold a secret. You (the player) are tasked with restoring this prototype military computer to unlock the knowledge held within. Very simple, only a handful of opcodes, but it's a challenge and fun in a way I haven't felt since the 80s. Being forced to juggle a variable around on the stack or between indexes or the accumulator an only having a few bytes of storage requires a different type of thinking. Good stuff. TIS100 definitely isn't for everyone and the challenge curve gets rather steep but once I "got it" it was one of those stay-up-all-night challenges. https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/ great review: https://blog.codinghorror.com/heres-the-programming-game-you-never-asked-for/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/heres-the-programming-game-you...