Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smokel 26 days ago
There are only 2^128 of such demos. How much of those are valid DOS programs? If we narrow it down to ones that generate both video and sound, I guess there are much less, which should motivate more people to try and find one :)
1 comments

2^128 is still a huuuuuge space.
It is big but the preconditions shave off a lot. You need to get to display memory and also get to a sound port and need to do both in a loop where each varies. And you need to build it out of valid instructions. That puts you at more like 2^75. Only a tiny fraction of those outputs will have any complexity. And only a tiny fraction of those will be aesthetic.

I don’t bet on us finding a -ton- of interesting sound plus video demos in 16 bytes.