gregkb

Turbo Assembler!!! I think that was pretty much the standard in the demoscene, at least in my circles. I wrote most of our DOS demos with it. Anything that ran in real mode, doing all the wild things like modifying code loaded already in memory... Then for actual 32-bit code (using protected mode) watcom c+asm compilers became the go-to. I still hand rolled some assembly, but with the advent of Pentium processors, their pre-fetch and dual pipeline execution watcom C did a fairly good job to compile highly efficient/optimised code, so asm coding mostly went away. (did use it later professionally for microchip controller programming though) As for nostalgia, I'd rather pick up a virtual console nowadays. The limited resolution, colours, etc. gives enough mental exercise without going back to x86 asm. :)

any specific model you had in mind? when I'm looking at the Lenovo offering, the "built-in" webcams are protruding and if I pair it with 4k resolution I quickly end up at 1300 dollars (yoga pro)... for $1600 you get the 5k apple Studio Display.

I have been back and forth with my wife about replacing the old intel based iMac she still uses. Because she does use FaceTime on it every day, she has been rejecting the idea of getting Mac mini + a monitor because I couldn't find a monitor with a comparable built-in camera. And to be fair, I might be able to hide the Mac mini, so it's just the monitor on her desk, but a webcam tucked on top of it, with the extra cabling does break a clean desk look. I haven't checked monitors with built-in cameras lately, so any recommendations would be much appreciated!

this is mind boggling! although during the 90s might have started to shift to use C in damascene production, but when I was most active (90-94) we were hand rolling a lot of code in assembly. memory "management" was pretty basic at best, code and data occasionally separated. maybe for demos it was less of thing, but for smaller intros, writing into the code during runtime was maybe not everyday process, but definitely not unheard. some of the graphic modes were barely documented if at all, so get this up and running with this accuracy is pretty remarkable. just some of the code from back then, might not pass a PR review nowadays

I remember this somewhat differently. I'm still grateful for my time at Nokia at that I had the chance to work in the vicinity of one their 3 (if I remember correctly) design centers. I was young and reckless and on one occasion I started to taunt one of the industrial designers who I was sitting at the next desk. I was telling them, hogy NTT Docomo is already pushing out mobile phones with color screens, polyphonic ringtones and Nokia is just doing n+1 iteration on low-res monochrome displays and beepers. The guy didn't say a word, reached for a key, opened one of the closed drawers and pulled out a Japanese phone. "Who do you think this was designed by?" Turned out that the same guys were doing the design for Nokia's Japanese phones, even for Docomo, under the "NO" moniker. (Docomo enforced a two letter + 3 digits model naming scheme) Nokia for a long time (as other manufacturers as well) thought that there is no interest in such devices in the US and European markets. The pricier phones targeted business users with a more reserved design. This wasn't (yet) cost cutting, more like how they have read the market. As for Symbian, others has already explained its shortcomings. There was an internal debate how it would be able to take Nokia to the next generation of smartphones and they have been working on the Linux based Maemo operating system. There were internal prototypes and maybe there was a limited run on N900 released. However, moving to a completely new platform seemed risky. I think ~2-3 years before the iPhone the decision was to try fixing Symbian instead of moving every service and partner to a yet unproven new platform. It was more of a "we have invested in it too much, we can't write it off" case.