The first issue ever published of Byte Magazine, visible and available on the Internet Archive at the time of this publication, features a bold claim on the cover: “Computers–the World’s Greatest Toy!” Said issue also dealt with the more mundane issues of choosing the best microprocessor for your home kit, building...

The opening frames of “The Art of the Algorithms” sets the scene perfectly: a chip tune plays as greeting text scrolls in a waving motion across the screen, reminiscent of a 1980s cracktro. Then, we get a proper title sequence, as electronic music supports a fast-moving tour through the graphics from classic demos....

The year is 2026, and we take computer-generated movies for granted: Pixar, Illumination, DreamWorks, and a myriad of smaller studios delight us every year with more and more technical and storytelling prowess. Heck, we even have “artificial intelligence” systems that can generate whole movies out of a single...

A superficial view of the videogames sector gives the impression that its employees and customers—the players of the games—are treated much better than at any time in history. Physical media, including EPROMs in cartridges, CD-ROMs, and Blu-Ray discs, have not been the primary method to distribute games since the...

Precisely as this issue lands on your browser or e-book reader, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is hitting theaters and receiving (at the time of this article) a rather tepid reception from audiences and critics. A feature film inspired by one of the most popular game franchises of all time, itself the brainchild of...

Welcome to the 90th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Startups. In this edition: Graham analyzes how startups could evolve in our world of AI and agents. Adrian ponders whether working as a software engineer in a fast-paced startup is worth the effort. In our Vidéothèque section, we watch “The AI Startup Grift...

We are at a point in history where, for the first time, it is possible for the tech startup as we know it to become a thing of the past. Of course, other kinds of startups are already things of the past, so it is not the most momentous of historical events. Software unicorn mega-deals are out, Forbes tells us, and...

The word “startup” became popular during the 1990s web craze. I do not remember it being a thing in Europe or Latin America before that time; of course that does not mean that startups did not exist, just that they were not in my radar as possible employment options for my adult life. They were certainly not in my...

To say that we live in a pivotal moment in tech history is such commonplace that you would think it would be unworthy to use such an epithet in this journal. Yet we do think that, but we are very aware that it will be only a decade or so before we can perform a conscious analysis of the various messes of our era (if...

What if I told you that your startup can avoid making a product, it just needs to suggest that it might make a product and see if anybody agrees to buy it? You might think your humble author to be mad. What if I told you that a former CTO of a startup that never managed an exit wrote that on a blog, and then again...

In many ways, the year 2007 was a crossroad in tech, and this has much more to do than just the introduction of the iPhone (although, by all means, that was quite a watershed moment). 2007 was the last moment in time our software workmanship operated without Git or GitHub. Without the Go programming language....

Welcome to the 89th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Ruby. We are thrilled to welcome Graham back to the newsroom! We are also introducing “Arts”, a new category exploring the connection between programming and the arts. In this edition: Graham describes the patterns that explain the rise and popularity of...