[superasn]

Yes it's an amazing tutorial. Thank you.

Speaking as a hobbyist, earlier if you had enough determination you could create just about any software if you kept hacking at it long enough. CPU or cost was generally not an issue, your time and tenacity was.

This has now unfortunately changed and innovation in software (esp ML) is now largely more about how deep are you pockets are.

[phreeza]

I think this is quite a rose colored view of the past. Rendering with many graphics techniques was out of reach for hobbyists for a long time for example.