bananaboy

Yeah I don't understand that attitude. There are so many people on twitter who say things like that or "X industry is cooked" etc. All pushing that narrative hard. Why are there so many people pushing it so hard like that? Are they all under the influence of the big labs and it's all guerilla marketing? Are they bots? Are there a lot of people who have drunk the kool aid or suffering AI psychosis? Normally when new tools come out this doesn't happen. I can only think of a handful of times where I've experienced this in the past where someone has pushed something on me really hard (Ruby and Rust spring to mind).

They might be thinking of the Sound Blaster Pro or Pro 2 which were 16-bit ISA cards, although really they were basically still 8-bit ISA cards that only used the extra pins on the 16-bit connector to give you a few more choices for IRQ/DMA. My gut feel is that the Pro and Pro 2 were when the SB really hit the mainstream. A lot of people I knew had them at the time, at any rate.

I love this! Thanks for sharing!

What a weird argument, I can't believe people say that sort of thing and mean it sincerely. Compilers and assemblers and linkers and books are not the same as using AI. They're not just both tools and equivalent. One is using your brain power to gain knowledge and learn how things work. The other is asking someone to make the thing for you. But I don't think we'll agree on anything here.

This isn't about a chess pro competing against a machine, this is about someone showing up and saying they're going to enter the competition but instead they run a chess program, and claim that they played against the chess pro and beat them.

Yes! Personally I think that's a much more interesting homage.

I would just run it on my 386 with real CRT anyway haha

Sure. I don't think I've ever had an LCD monitor that supports 70hz at a useful resolution though. My current monitors (native resolution 2560x1440) only seem to support it at 1024x768!

Ah yeah true, no I don't think you're misunderstanding. Actually sorry I misspoke - what I've seen in the game re/decomp projects is that the binary gets turned into a direct C implementation of the instruction stream, and it's basically a sort of emulation with CPU/memory state and emulation of whatever hardware it might need to talk to.

Second Reality runs in real mode, and doesn't use XMS or EMS so it runs in 640kb!

I find it hard to congratulate someone on a project when they say Claude or whatever did it for them. It just feels so insincere. I myself wouldn't feel good getting compliments about something that I prompted into existence.

I feel the same, it sucks. All you can do is carve out a space for yourself doing the things you enjoy, and don't let the AI grifters tell you that AI is the only way and everyone else is "cooked", no one will be writing things by hand, etc etc. God that rhetoric is depressing.

I write demos and games as a hobby predominantly for MS-DOS and machines ranging from the 386 up to the Pentium (soon to add 8088/286 to that list) as well as old consoles like the Sega Master System and other random platforms (like ARM-based kids toys like the Leapster Explorer).

Right now I'm working on an EGA production. I could just get an AI to generate a lot of the code for me or give me all the answers, but instead, I have my Programmer's Guide to the EGA/VGA/SVGA by Ferraro and another reference open on my desk trying to understand the CRTC so I can create a custom video mode. I live for this stuff and want to fully understand what's going on in the hardware. I like the creative aspects of making demos and games but I also like the technical aspects, and understanding the platform and the deep details.

When I spend too much time reading HN or X and see too much of the AI stuff, it really bums me out, so I have to detox by unfollowing/ignoring and getting back to my projects.

Uh, many people. There are plenty of demo parties with retro categories in the compos, and plenty of people still interested in writing their own code for those platforms.

That's correct. Personally as an MS-DOS retro enthusiast and programmer I don't know how anyone could call XP and DOS synonymous!