Before electronics, humans were already encoding behavior into machines.

Cams stored motion in their shape. Pinned drums stored sequences. Gears embodied
ratios. Punched media could change what a machine did. Mechanical calculators
turned arithmetic into moving metal.

That is what blows my mind about old computers now. A Commodore 128 running BASIC
is not the beginning of the story. It is one stop in a centuries-long obsession:
build the mechanism, encode the rules, start it, and watch the machine take over
the repetitive part.

Different century. Same nerd brain.