[aquova]

I feel the same way about it. I was a student when I first heard about it, and I definitely feel that making my own (terrible) Pico-8 games made me a much better programmer than I would've been otherwise, and also helped me grasp concepts that I found difficult to understand from lectures. Even an artistic simpleton like myself can make an 8x8 sprite look good, and the other self-imposed limitations of the system actually do a great deal of reducing the burden of too many choices. By holding you back in certain areas, it actually makes the end goal of finishing a game easier to reach. If anyone is debating picking it up, I strongly recommend it.

Getting back to the article, I was familiar with Fred's games, and I personally think he's one of the most talented developers in the community, I'm very excited for the upcoming Poom game, which frankly is beginning to border on Dark Magic.