--- title: Why I Am a Programmer | daily.dev description: A childhood spent pirating games on 3.5" floppies and dialing into BBSes exposed the author to the demoscene. Downloaded cracked games came with 'cracktros,'... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-am-a-programmer-kevxpoew0 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why I Am a Programmer | daily.dev og:description: A childhood spent pirating games on 3.5" floppies and dialing into BBSes exposed the author to the demoscene. Downloaded cracked games came with 'cracktros,'... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-am-a-programmer-kevxpoew0 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kEvXPoEw0.png og:image:alt: Why I Am a Programmer og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why I Am a Programmer **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A childhood spent pirating games on 3.5" floppies and dialing into BBSes exposed the author to the demoscene. Downloaded cracked games came with 'cracktros,' brazen posters by crackers shown before the title screen, which were the precursor to demos. Finding Denthor of ASPHYXIA's TUT1-9.ZIP, a tutorial series documenting how to code demo-like effects in TP6/7, was the turning point. Typing out Denthor's Turbo Pascal 6.0 code gave a basic understanding of how the pieces fit together and sparked the desire to become a programmer rather than just a gamer. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 197 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-26). **TL;DR:** The post triggered a wave of nostalgic reminiscence about early computing, piracy, BBSes, and the demoscene, with many sharing their own origin stories and tracing them back to Denthor's tutorials, alongside a smaller side-thread worrying about AI's impact on the joy and future of programming as a career. **Sentiment:** 70% positive · 22% mixed · 8% skeptical **The case for** - Many shared how Denthor's tutorials or similar early tinkering experiences (BASIC, TI calculators, BBS doors) directly sparked their own programming careers. - Several praised the post for capturing a shared cultural memory of piracy, demos, and early hacker culture that feels largely lost today. - Some found renewed joy using AI/agent tools to build things faster, framing it as an evolution of the same fun rather than a loss. **The pushback** - Several worry that today's kids can't replicate that discovery path since modern devices hide their internals and software is less approachable. - A notable thread argues AI/agents have stripped the creative, puzzle-solving joy out of programming as a job, leaving people disengaged or anxious about employability. - A few pushed back hard on AI optimism, calling current coding agents unreliable 'bullshit machines' masking real limitations. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Dominant mood is warm nostalgia and story-swapping about early computing and the demoscene, but a significant secondary thread debates whether AI has ruined or merely changed the joy of programming and job security. **Hottest debate:** Whether AI coding agents have destroyed the creative joy of programming or simply changed how that joy is expressed. **Open questions** - Can today's children find an equivalent 'gateway' into programming when modern devices are closed and opaque compared to 80s/90s hardware and software? - Will AI-driven coding ultimately eliminate programming jobs or just reshape what the work looks like? **Highlights** > OP here: I’m now spending more time in AI agents than in emacs these days, but I can honestly say that I’m having even more fun now given that I’m able to build things within days that would have taken me months! … but don’t give me hate… I still code with my hands :) > — [alfiedotwtf on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237278) > And the creative, puzzle solving, game like nature of it is now completely gone. Answering architectural questions isn't fun to me. I loved the process of writing code and now I hate being a software developer. > — [sevenzero on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50240512) > I made lots of cash undoing the Indian outsourcing mess. Ive also been deep in AI. Not only is AI inadequate for well engineered software, I think treating programming as a language translation task between spec and code boring. They're even worse for research, rabbit holes and bad lines of reasoning. Im amazed people don't see how much smoke and mirrors even the frontier models and harnesses are using to mask the fact that they're reasonable sounding bullshit machines. > — [sirsinsalot on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237193) > Oh wow, I was thinking of writing a very similar post too. Denthor's tutorials were one of my first introductions to programming, and I too fondly remember typing them all into Turbo Pascal and trying to understand exactly what they did. I've always wondered what Denthor / Grant Smith was up to in the years after the tutorials, and if he ever thought about how many people he might have helped get interested in programming. If anyone's curious you can actually find Denthor's tutorials here: http://textfiles.com/programming/astrainer.txt I also searched around a bit and found this good thread that seems to indicate Denthor is doing well these days and lives in England with a family: http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=7530&page=1 > — [tdicola on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8837649) > Denthor, or Grant Smith, went on to build one of the world's first online casinos. He did this with his brother, Dean (I think), in the city of Durban, South Africa. They were tremendously successful and sold their business to a company called Microgaming, who are now the largest privately-owned gaming software company in the world. Apparently Grant still works for Microgaming but does so for fun, as one of the conditions of the sale was a profit share in all future earnings. His brother Dean retired and is travelling the world. So, sounds like Grant did OK :) > — [bbs-protege on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8837808) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235017) · 229 points · 77 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8837545) · 89 points · 118 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36600104) · 2 points · 2 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-a-demoscene-intro-for-the-zx-spectrum-soktnr58t) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Recreational Programming](https://daily.dev/posts/recreational-programming-zvq8iwafx) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Diving into Retro Computing with the Amstrad PCW 8256](https://daily.dev/posts/diving-into-retro-computing-with-the-amstrad-pcw-8256-yksnkio8j) · Scott Logic · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#retrocomputing](https://daily.dev/tags/retrocomputing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-am-a-programmer-kevxpoew0) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why I Am a Programmer","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-am-a-programmer-kevxpoew0","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-am-a-programmer-kevxpoew0"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T21:41:43.683Z","dateModified":"2026-10-26T10:13:09.761Z","description":"A childhood spent pirating games on 3.5\" floppies and dialing into BBSes exposed the author to the demoscene. 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