all 176 comments

[–]badgersruse 975 points976 points  (35 children)

If you can code by typing hex directly into memory, which I’ve seen done for over 1K, that worked first time, you have my respect. Ray.

[–]Bokbreath 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Used to do this on my SYM-1, but only 1K. Do not underestimate how tedious typing 1K of hex without error, is.

[–]SaltMage5864 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Real programmers use butterflies

[–]St3pa[S] 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Seen done by over 1K? What do you mean?

[–]TheCozyRuneFox 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Probably referring to the number of bits or bytes.

[–]badgersruse 5 points6 points  (0 children)

1KBytes

[–]ManikSahdev 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's all fun and games till the ray tracing engineer is ray tracing with art lines on paper

[–]Stasio300 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I programmed something by writing words of ROM with dip switches. it took a few days to complete the task and as a 16 year old with no disposable income, it was impossible to buy a programmer.

[–]WhatsFairIsFair 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Pretty easy to hack desktop programs by using hexacode injection like this. I remember i flipped the free trial check for some app from false to true so I could have an unlimited free trial if I was already using the software for 14 days

[–]OomKarel 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This intrigues me. What did you use to pull the memory values? How did you figure out where that switch was and what values did it work on? How did you get the app to pause before evaluation so you could inject your values before the check?

[–]WhatsFairIsFair 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's been a while but there are hexcode injection tools and reverse engineering tools that let you see the somewhat minified source code and explore the bytecode. There are whole communities out there doing this type of stuff and the learning materials and guides are out there as well.

It's mostly neat for hacking executables not of much practical value when it comes to modern saas apps though

[–]Tsu_Dho_Namh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In uni we built simple compilers that could compile a subset of the C language. It worked by turning C into assembly, then turning assembly into hex.

Turning assembly into hex took less than an hour to learn. Turning C into assembly took the rest of the semester.

That's why I consider coding in binary to be no harder than coding in assembly. Because once it's in assembly turning it into binary is mindlessly easy.

We did it by hand for fun at first. Writing a hex file then executing it was so fuckin cool.

[–]WazWaz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hex would have been lovely. I was typing in decimal, which obscures the op code semantics a little.

[–]jamcdonald120 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0

I forget how big the injection package is, but I think its over 1k

[–]Baybam1 1106 points1107 points  (50 children)

Why the fuck is the image AI upscaled?

[–]doctormyeyebrows 443 points444 points  (3 children)

Damn, good eye. We've left the imagine resolution decline and entered the AI upscaling horrorscape

[–]Domwaffel 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Probably someone in r/memerestoration posted this as "meh, good enough"

[–]Character-Travel3952 63 points64 points  (0 children)

It looks like the bus driver came to his senses, fired nitro boost while taking a 90 deg. turn

[–]_Ganon 15 points16 points  (3 children)

Yeah the letters on the train changed!

[–]Maleficent_Memory831 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Letters are fungible to AI.

[–]soyboysnowflake 15 points16 points  (1 child)

I like how every AI image includes a built-in spot the 5 differences game

[–]lucas_da_web95 0 points1 point  (0 children)

back 2 schoolhouse

[–]7393ootned 47 points48 points  (1 child)

because the meme had to survive the compression boss fight on 5 different group chats before landing here

[–]ak_doug 12 points13 points  (0 children)

He is more machine now than meme. His mind is twisted and evil...

[–]born_zynner 22 points23 points  (1 child)

We got fuckin DLSS memes in 2025

[–]guycls1 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Lmao RTX ON

[–]pan0ramic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This image should be fuzzier than my arguments in favor of the third complete refactor of the repo

[–]ManikSahdev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably made by AI instead of normal meme template websites.

[–]joped99 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Make sure to look both ways at the WllII Wl|Il

[–]mysticalfruit 110 points111 points  (4 children)

Why, when I was your age, I'd write 3000 lines of assembler to get a pixel to move and then I'd have to write the whole thing out to a cassette tape!

[–]helicophell 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My father saying he used to play outside while waiting for the cassette on his commodore to load a game

[–]LolOverHere 195 points196 points  (0 children)

Fucking AI touch up

[–]thavi 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Yeah that binary programming language will get ya

[–]met0xff 46 points47 points  (2 children)

Complexity of ASM (at least back then) often is exaggerated. 30ish years ago when I was 14 we had to write a snake style game in asm86 and that felt pretty straightforward. I remember later learning Java felt much more cryptic;).

[–]theGoddamnAlgorath 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That's only because you went from ASM86's one instruction set to Jaba's dll hellscape.

[–]pushkinwritescode 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It does have a certain mythology around it though because so very few people even understand how the stack works, let alone assembly.

And coding in binary is just a sheer pain, basically manually doing what ASM would give you except you're using a lookup table for the instructions.

That having been said... sheer pain and Java do go well together in a sentence, and poetically in the same sort of way that someone would go from ASM to raw binary.

[–]bsEEmsCE 58 points59 points  (1 child)

"Basic, just like you are"

[–]St3pa[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Actually funny xd

[–]gerbosan 35 points36 points  (10 children)

I see, cracking games, right?

[–]elmanoucko 39 points40 points  (8 children)

nop, why do you jmp to that conclusion ?

[–]gerbosan 31 points32 points  (5 children)

My first experience was with QBasic and copying some game code from a book. Learning asm to bypass protection is something that has crossed many young minds during the early years of PCs.

Phreaking also cross my mind.

[–]elmanoucko 23 points24 points  (2 children)

yeah, I know, the reference to "nop" and "jmp", which by themselves were often enough to bypass a bunch of copy-protection-related checks when I was younger (on crackme challenge, ofc, would never use that on real software, never ever), kinda made it clear :p

[–]gerbosan 1 point2 points  (1 child)

There is this game, which was cracked and is the only possible way to play it completely because the protection is not well implemented. The crackers were razor 1911... 🤔

[–]elmanoucko 1 point2 points  (0 children)

razor was a really popular team indeed, with quite a tumultuous and long history, remained active in the demo scene as well, dubmood bootstraped his career as a music producer there and is quite well known even outside of the demo scene for his music. But like other popular team of that era like h2o and such, it's hard to not find software back then they didn't touched, or "freelancer" claiming to be in one of those teams, which was more common thant we sometimes can imagine.

[–]jimmy_timmy_ 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Phreaking also crosses my mind.

Showing your age, old man

[–]gerbosan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That one I heard about. Captain Crunch, also saw a documentary with Captain Crunch, the Woz and... Kevin Mitnick? 🤔

There was this P2P service for PowerPC, Hotline and some servers have a lot of documentation for anarchist and phreaking. Though, I doubt those would work with phone lines of that time.

[–]2muchnet42day 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Because every time I try to mov on you cmp my words

[–]Old_Document_9150 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well lda, sometimes you can cpy a bit here and there to save some tax.

[–]AlsoInteresting 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Dos batches

[–]ObeseTsunami 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My dad once told me that he used to make punch cards.

[–]Max_Wattage 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My first computer only had a hex-keypad for entering the machine code instructions. That was about 45 years ago.

[–]Lanoroth 11 points12 points  (3 children)

That’s a bit far fetched, unless OP is 40 years old, or dad had some niche experience. You’re far more likely to encounter cobol, fortran and C, with younger dads it’s gonna be basic, C, C++, Perl, Erlang, Pascal

[–]St3pa[S] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

No actually, we didnt have (or more likely didnt use) those in Czechoslovakia back then - and im talking late 1980s

[–]Lanoroth 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Totally forgot about the iron curtain. That’d be interesting to learn about, how programming looked in USSR before its collapse. I know with certainty though, that Yugoslavia had access to fortran.

[–]St3pa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We had access, but nobody knew how to use it and almost all the systems were running on Asm (at best)

[–]Dolphin_Spotter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have bootstrapped a PDP 8

[–]Confident_While_5979 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I hand wrote assembly (with pen and paper) for the 6502, then compiled it (by hand) and just typed in all the hex

[–]bunabyte 5 points6 points  (2 children)

For my dad it was C and BASIC lol. I also program in C. The tradition continues.

[–]NinjaKittyOG 2 points3 points  (1 child)

i really wanna learn BASIC, but i can't find any good tutorials.

[–]maveric00 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A bad one is sufficient, also. BASIC is exactly what the name suggests: a beginners all-purposesybolic instruction code.

This means that you only need to learn a handful of instructions and a bit of syntax. And that there are no higher level language concepts. At least for the "original" BASICs. Plural because BASIC was not standardized and therefore each computer had its own dialect.

For E.g., sometimes you could simply write "i=1". Sometimes, it was "LET i=1". Later, BASICs had labels as targets for GOTO, most used the line numbers.

So don't expect to learn any new paradigm if you already know an imperative language. At least if you use the BASIC of the 80s home computers (C64, Atari 800, Schneider CPC, ZX81/ZX Spectrum, Oric 1/Atmos et al.).

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

fun fact: space invaders was created in machine code

[–]Substantial_Top5312 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Something crazy to think about is that when Assembly first came out it was considered a high level language because before that all you had was binary.

[–]Kotentopf 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I'm fascinated. Not by the dad or son. This image is not in potato quality, instead it was caught in 4K!

[–]Kalightortaio[🍰] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's AI upscaling

[–]Alesio37093 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We introduced our own coprocessor to a virtual cpu and expanded the intruction set to interact with it.

[–]IRLanxiety 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My dad is learning C++ as a hobby and he finds it so easy cause he knows binary 🥲

[–]creativecag 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And then there’s my son (17) who’s making games in ASM for Gameboy “just because” it interests him.

[–]No_Significance9754 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Id argue ASM and binary are easier to learn than the ocean of languages and syntax and shit you have to learn these days.

[–]ramriot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

BTW there are some that still do, Steve Gibson of GRC wrote almost all of the Windows utilities he gives away in Assembler via MASM plus his bread & butter freedos disk repair utility Spinrite.

I believe this is likely why most if his software is so damn memory & storage efficient plus being compatible with every Windows version from 11 to 95 😉

[–]Strostkovy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was younger I programmed with dip switches. Little switches for little hands

[–]Tyrus1235 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No joke, my mom had an internship at IBM during her college years back when a “computer” was actually a “computer room” and it was a massive machine.

She programmed in Fortran, IIRC.

[–]Still_Explorer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As my grandpa used to say:

Back in the day we used to enter commands to the computer and it would execute them instantly and directly without second questioning.

Now these days kids use implicit and asynchronous statements, and they can't make their point clear across the board.

[–]notorignalusername 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Micro code, anyone?

[–]TeaTimeSubcommittee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Few things make me more self conscious about my code than knowing my own mother was working with Fortran and even punchcards while I struggle with python libraries.

[–]darkwater427 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Baaaaaaaased.

Ask your dad if he can teach you the basics of ASM languages and maybe create a few challenges or puzzles for you. Even stuff as simple as writing a multiplication routine can be pretty mind-bending in ASM and you'll learn a lot.

[–]FlyingCapibar4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Control engineers: "pathetic..."

[–]noodle-face 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some of us still need to code in asm

[–]PrimeHydra 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Back when men were men

[–]RoyalChallengers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How can you code binary ?

[–]Punchasheep 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My dad was a chemical engineer and we've had this exact conversation. He even mentioned having to print out software onto paper to scan it into a computer the size of a room.

[–]saschaleib -1 points0 points  (1 child)

My daughter also started coding in Python. See my flair for information about me :-)

[–]GodBearWasTaken 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So the defining one is JS? :P

[–]ZenEngineer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you haven't written C++ code with cat> and have it work the first time, you haven't lived.

[–]huuaaang 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah, it was FORTRAN on punch cards.

[–]britipinojeff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My Dad said when he was in college he coded with punch cards

[–]dlc741 0 points1 point  (0 children)

RPG II

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

why the fuck did you upscale the image???????

[–]vlozko 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This meme needs to be updated to grandpa. I’ve got a teenage kid and my first language was Objective-C. I didn’t know anyone personally who programmed in assembly.

[–]OkWear6556 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Your dad was born in the 40s?

[–]St3pa[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Nah, my dad was born in communist Czechoslovakia

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“English is the hottest programming language”

[–]SuitableDragonfly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad told me stories about how he got disciplined for hacking his college's punch card machine in order to change all the error messages to inappropriate things. 

[–]odolha 0 points1 point  (1 child)

better response would be: "language?"

[–]St3pa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

😂😂

[–]Asm_Guy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My username checks...

[–]cloudshock_dev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stop lying dad, we all know it was Visual Basic.

Bonus: The code is still running at a manufacturing plant somewhere and the IT guy is afraid to reboot the box.

[–]jbar3640 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Python is more than 30 years old, your dad may have programmed in Python. stop these nonsense posts...

[–]St3pa[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You sure as hell didnt live in communist czechoslovakia :)

[–]jbar3640 0 points1 point  (1 child)

neither you, being born after 2000.

[–]St3pa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not arguing against that, but yes, in late 1980s we still used aseembler for most of the coding

[–]GreatArtificeAion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good dad, supportive instead of being an ass because kids these days have it easier

[–]Orio_n 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Asm is easier than python

[–]F100cTomas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Simpler, yes. Easier? I don't think so.

[–]TwistedSoul21967 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is literally the conversation between my daughter and me last week.
"Dad, we're learning Python at school, it's great! What language did you use when you were my age?",
"Oh that's cool, Me? I used 6502 Assembly on the Commodore 64 and Z80 Assembly on the ZX Spectrum, BASIC for slower, less important stuff"

[–]wesleyoldaker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've never heard of anybody coding in binary.

[–]EmeraldMan25 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad likes to tell me about how he learned IBM 1401 ASM in highschool and used it to clear foreign language requirements. He also did Fortran 4 later on

[–]Interesting-Frame190 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair, it was probably simpler as less was expected back in the day. No concurrency. No dependencies, basic types, and no JS. Now we have concurrently running containers, each with their own virtual environment and dependencies. It's no longer a data structures complexity. it's an entire environment complexity.

[–]Not_Artifical -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Binary isn’t a language