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Ask HN: Should I learn to program old machines?

5 points by jwdunne ↗ HN
Often take the time to read the stories of great programmers. One thing I note, especially in Coders at Work, is that they all seemed to learn on an old machine. I get the impression that writing useful software under those constraints shaped their outlook for the rest of their careers.

Do you think, personally, if it's worth setting up an emulator or VM to match old hardware and learning to write cool, useful programs on it?

5 comments

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YoAdrian
You're the only one that can answer that question. Is it worth it _to you_ to learn with those old school restraints vs. modern architectures?
jwdunne
Oh yes. Curiosity is my sole driver, not economic reasons. It sounds like a tonne of fun. Just wondered what everyone else's take on it is.
mod
If it's curiosity, and this stuff makes you curious, then you're wasting your time doing anything else.

Have fun!

detaro
An option would be embedded stuff. Grab a microcontroller board and do fun stuff with that.
davismwfl
I'd say yes. Grab a microcontroller and do something fun with it, or setup a constrained machine and write some real software using it. I don't necessarily suggest using old architectures that are no longer relevant, but instead a constrained resource machine.

My reasoning is it forces you to really make better code choices, algorithms etc. Simply because many times choosing the wrong algorithm etc on newer hardware has little consequence until you get a larger data set that is hard to test with.

Hopefully that all makes sense.