I love it 100%. I just miss feeling like it was worthwhile work. Made me wistful for simpler times.

Apparently it pissed off hacker news for me to say so judging by the downvotes but I'm leaving it.

It's very cool stuff.

Yea, don't sweat it. The harmony of art and technology is definitely cool stuff and even though there may not be much practical uses for this right now, there may be potential down the line if utilized in the right context. Wish there was more of this sort of artsy hackery on HN, as I think there are great possibilities here.

yeah i am judging by the down votes i didnt get that across right, either...oh well. Its cool, no doubt, i'd just love to see a cool use of this besides the few seconds of entertainment i got from it. I'm sure someone will come up with something.

I think it's great.

And I don't think all programming has to have an immediate practical application. In fact I wish more of us were doing stuff like this. Practically every 30-something hacker I know was doing graphics demos in the early 90s.

I guess people thought I was saying any 13 year old could do this or something.

* shrug

For what it's worth, I don't really think that your down votes are because other people misinterpreted what you were saying; rather, you didn't really say anything. In subsequent comments you've revealed what you meant, and it's interesting.

actually thats a great point, i feel like when i first started programming (c64 - im not /that old/) i was always playing with sprites and graphical outputs...however something happened and it all became about data and forms.

People should do more stuff like this, maybe it'll open up our minds to greater possibilities.

I was thinking exactly this just last week. I started with the C64, making simple demos just for the sheer love of it all, but then I never went anywhere with it. Then things got complicated enough that "fun" just had too much overhead.

As of last week, I've been playing with Pharo Smalltalk, of all things. So far, the combination of a "live" and "manipulable" gui library like Morphic and image-based environment has been great.

I can directly modify things and see the results, which makes it fun again, and I can save my entire project state, open windows and running demos and all, and resume it later when I have time. It means I can do something with half an hour of time, which is often all I have between work and kids. I just pop open the image and I'm back where I was, and I can write a few methods or just play with the objects and save again. Otherwise, it seems like it takes me at least half an hour just to start up emacs or eclipse, load all my project files, start an interpreter, get my brain back together, etc., etc.

It'll never be useful for my day job, but it makes writing silly little visualizations of A* or cellular automata actually fun.

+1.. I too, started with c64 and feel like I wouldn't be where I am at today if it wasn't for that. I use to take existing games and play with the graphics just to learn.