I love this stuff. Thinking about how our software and its supply chain break down so dramatically given small adversaries like 'intermittent internet access' or 'old crappy machines' has definitely changed the way I think about software as a developer.
I appreciate the care 100r has put into working with their doors open and sharing their lives, circumstances and worldview.
I'm not using Uxn but am I following a bit of a quest to try my hand at personal shaped computing. I didn't really want to write an emulator (I don't have a game-preservation shaped problem) and I like to be able to just "takeover" computers around me with bootable USB sticks. Fittingly, my project is in x86 assembly, real-mode with BIOS routines for IO and as a stand-in for drivers. (Tldr; not amazing but serviceable, and Devine is right that 64kb is a lot)
As a long time python programmer, I've found it fun to play in the land of understanding memory layouts, segmentation, and writing assembler. I highly recommend it for educational purposes. I don't need a hobby project that looks like work in my off time so real-mode programming fits nicely. As a plus I rediscovered MSDOS .COM files and it's shockingly fast and will give you 64kb of memory setup and a filesystem which is handy. Again here I don't have to write an emulator and my little Forth-like project could bootstrap from DOS assemblers and tool chains.
My take away from Uxn project is "go ahead and try to do something fun with a computer". Uxn very much isn't about making the most efficient p-machine or best language, but something that fits 100r. And that more of us with the background in computers ought to try something off the beaten path because we might learn something and we might have fun doing it.
I appreciate the care 100r has put into working with their doors open and sharing their lives, circumstances and worldview.
I'm not using Uxn but am I following a bit of a quest to try my hand at personal shaped computing. I didn't really want to write an emulator (I don't have a game-preservation shaped problem) and I like to be able to just "takeover" computers around me with bootable USB sticks. Fittingly, my project is in x86 assembly, real-mode with BIOS routines for IO and as a stand-in for drivers. (Tldr; not amazing but serviceable, and Devine is right that 64kb is a lot)
As a long time python programmer, I've found it fun to play in the land of understanding memory layouts, segmentation, and writing assembler. I highly recommend it for educational purposes. I don't need a hobby project that looks like work in my off time so real-mode programming fits nicely. As a plus I rediscovered MSDOS .COM files and it's shockingly fast and will give you 64kb of memory setup and a filesystem which is handy. Again here I don't have to write an emulator and my little Forth-like project could bootstrap from DOS assemblers and tool chains.
My take away from Uxn project is "go ahead and try to do something fun with a computer". Uxn very much isn't about making the most efficient p-machine or best language, but something that fits 100r. And that more of us with the background in computers ought to try something off the beaten path because we might learn something and we might have fun doing it.