[ikari_pl]

yes yes yes!

I tried to convey some of that magic, or at least logically reason why those 8-bits were awesome, in a blog post once - https://retrofun.pl/2021/05/18/hobbyarding/ :)

It still feels like this sometimes. Finding poorly documented system calls, changing screen properties in ways beyond BASIC, getting into how CP/M works internally... (more comprehensible than today's 1000x larger systems)... Or even doing Advent of Code in BASIC is cool!

[krumpet]

I tried conveying the same to my teen children. It went over like a lead zeppelin.

[ikari_pl]

so it IS only in our heads?

on the other hand, nobody would read a manual these days anymore...

[dylan604]

i wouldn't say in our heads like we made it up, but it's just an experience that you cannot replicate if you've already experienced modern computing. growing up and experiencing the changes from analog to digital, dial-up to always on gigabit, 8bit to 64bit address space, 8bit color to 32bit, 8bit audio to 24bit, is all different because we have that frame of reference so it means more to us.

also, i didn't read manuals back then. i didn't know where they were. closest to a manual i had were Byte magazines