12th October 2026

Over the last ten years or so retrocomputing has definitely grown as an eco-
system in it's own right. Yes, it's been a thing for a lot longer, but there
has been a veritable explosion in both software and hardware for older
platforms of all types. Some of it interests me greatly, some of it less so,
but I've always had respect for other people's endeavours.

As I wrote on Mastodon recently, the sheer bloody mindedness of some poeple to
wrestly with old hardware and it's restraints is something I love. I think it's
something many of us love when it comes to the demoscene for instance. There
are genuine wizards out there, and they craft spells and perform magic.

Something that's been noticable recently however is a sudden boom in games
being ported onto platforms they have no right to run on, and while many of
these have been conjured up by sourcerers working for years, a dissapointingly
large number have been spat out by an LLM. If you want to use such a tool to
port a game or put something together that's beyond your skill for your own
entertainment, that's great: you do you. Enjoy it and have fun with it. It's
not on anyone to tell you what you can or can't do, but be honest about it. 
Don't say "I ported this", because you didn't, and I feel genuinely sorry for
the others out there pouring their heart and soul into something to achieve a
particular result that are then overlooked by something more flashy.

It fucking sucks that everytime I see something that should get me excited I
have to temper my expectations and go hunting for the source first, looking for
the too-frequent presenece of CLAUDE.md or agents.md file, or a README that's
been spewed into existence. Sometimes I'm delighted, and get to appreciate a
genuine work of art, but more and more often it's just a let down.