18 posted 2 years ago by pkvi 2 years ago by pkvi +19 / -1 29 comments share 29 comments share save hide report block hide replies
Many years ago I help port a 2D version of Space War to a Z-80 processor
I think we had 16 kilobytes to play with.
It was played on an oscilloscope.
A lot of it was fixed code -- like the gravity tables (no real time floating point math)
So that is roughly in the ballpark of NASA.
I took apart an old (broken) mechanical adding machine that would do division.
A million little metal parts.
This was designed without the aid of a computer -- just pencil and paper.
I came to the conclusion --- people were smarter back then.
We are spoiled today.