The Last Generation of Developers Who Learned to Code Manually (opens in new tab)

There was a time when software engineers had to understand the machine almost as much as the software itself. Not metaphorically. Literally. Game developers working on older consoles didn’t just write games, they engineered around physical limitations. Cartridges weren’t just storage devices. Developers learned how to manipulate the hardware itself to squeeze out more performance, more memory, more possibilities. Every byte mattered. And that got me thinking about AI. Not in the “AI is replac...