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by qsera 49 days ago
The computer being a mystical machine is also a lot about the period in which existed. I think since computers were not very powerful it was a bit magical how much stuff it can be made to do just with the right instructions (I mean software). I mean, one day it can only do ASCII output in, and the next day it is playing movies at 24bit color, Just with the right software..

At least for me, this inspired to spend endless nights with the computer in hopes of making it do magical things (which I managed to accomplish to my great satisfaction). For example, "morphing" was a big deal back then and was everywhere, in commercials, music videos an movies. One late night I implemented a QBasic program that can "morph" between two figures (also traced using a program that controlled a pixel using keyboard).

I understand that it is trivial, but to me accomplishing that was magical (in my own terms ofcourse)...