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The Alternative Party 2003

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-as-long-as-there-are-llamas dept.

mkoskimi writes "The fourth consecutive Alternative Party is arranged this weekend (Friday to Sunday) in Helsinki, Finland. As before, we expect up to 300 people joining this round-the-clock event, bringing along all kinds of weird machines (previous times have seen a Magnavox Odyssey, a M6800 Evaluation Kit II and the Vectrex). It's not yet another retro computer show though; there will be Competitions, artists and our guest of honour, Jeff Minter! There be llamas here..."

1 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Demo Scene by Goth+Biker+Babe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was attempting to code demos which use the hardware to it's limit (mainly on the BBC Micro) which laid the grounds for my future career in embedded software.

    Demo coding (and game programming) produced a generation of software engineers who know how to keep memory usage to a minimum and eek as much power as they can out of the hardware. To solve solutions or produce effects they had to be inspirational and use hardware in ways the designers had never envisaged. One example being using hardware timers, the screen sync interrupt a nd low level coding to flip pallets during the screen draw and so get more colours than are supported normally.

    I worry that the new generation have had it too easy and that these skills will be lost.