I booted my MiSTer into TI-99/4A mode a week or so ago and started writing little programs in TI BASIC. TI BASIC sucked. It was slow, due to being written in a form of bytecode which had to be interpreted (and it would in turn interpret your program). And you couldn't do sprites, not without getting the Extended BASIC cart.

But HOLY SHIT THE DOPAMINE RUSH. Just crafting things and making them appear on the screen with a few statements... It was like I was a kid again. I remembered why I liked programming.

It's like... AI is a cheatcode. It's iddqd. Sure, you can cakewalk through a level with it on, but are you really playing the game, then? You certainly haven't gotten better by doing so, and you haven't experienced the involuntary buttcheek clench when you hear a cacodemon hiss from behind you... The whole point of programming is the new things I can do by having gone through the exercise of figuring it out. The ways I've grown, the glimpses I've gotten into the world.