[bnastic]

> If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell.

Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up

[Angostura]

There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery

[bnastic]

True. As a kid I was eagerly awaiting the first week of the month for that one magazine that carried a column called “C-64 intro service” about low level intro- and demo-programming. But the pace of printed information is terribly slow, esp. if you can’t get many of them where you live.

I remember waiting for someone to explain how the “giant scroll” worked (letter the size of the whole screen, with borders removed) as I couldn’t disassemble the demo successfully. Months later, the article appeared explaining the technique. To a young inquiring mind that seemed like eternity.

[jacquesm]

I just read the little excerpt from a newspaper in the article about the genesis of the transistor and it struck me that the technical details in those paragraphs were way above what an audience of today would ever be exposed to from a technical level.

[millerm]

You made me search for “genesis of the transistor” and I found this old gem: https://youtu.be/WiQvGRjrLnU

Here is a quote from that film that makes me a bit envious of those work environments: “Working in an environment which fosters the uninhibited search for answers to riddles of science related to communications’ needs.”

Wow, to work in an environment that has that sort of mission must be rewarding.

[keyle]

That's true. With no internet and only a crappy book, my use of the ZX 80 was pretty poor compared to what I would have mentally capable of doing, if I had access to further knowledge.

[wiz21c]

Cleverness could express itself in the way you actually gathered documentation... Back in those days, it was really tough to get any. For example, I was out of the scene. So I decided to create a disk magazine to talk bout the scene, hopefully getting in contact with it. That's exactly what happened and a s a result of that, I got access to one marvelous piece of software I couldn't write by himself : a MOD player (included with SoundBlaster DMA access which was very hard to code)...

[dwd]

This

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme...

I still have my copy after all these years.