This attitude is fairly common amongst the real old timers of the demoscene. While there is of course a bit of viewing the past through rose tinted glasses, I think it's definitely grounded in truth.
The reason for that is that demo programming is the coding equivalent of watch making: extremely precise, technical work that takes deep knowledge and long hours to achieve something notable. Knowing your tools and platform inside out is a necessity - and the more modern your CPU/GPU are, the less realistic that is. When I was writing assembly for my 8MHz z80, I could easily hold the full instruction set + CPU register layout etc in working memory. When you're working on a modern i7 + GTX780, that's pretty much impossible, and you have to resort to abstraction layers and tools that inevitably lead to the situation described by the author of the article. It's a classic case of extreme restraints working in the favor of creativity.
Interestingly enough, my few friends who are still into coding demos don't do it on modern architectures - they're mostly sticking to the C64.
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture that specializes
in producing demos: small, self-contained computer programs that produce
audio-visual presentations. The main goal of a demo is to show off
programming, artistic, and musical skills.
Basically, these programs are extremely small, but produce interesting and impressive visual or audio experiences. A popular example would be "fr-041: debris. by farbrausch": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxfmxi-boyo
I think the JS k demos are pretty interesting to say the least... it's amazing what can be done with a few K.. though the original vs. final code doesn't always bear much resemblance.
The point is, too many people don't spend any* time thinking of how what they write is inefficient or not... Even mobile devices are becoming mobile powerhouses. It's a bit of a shame really.
The reason for that is that demo programming is the coding equivalent of watch making: extremely precise, technical work that takes deep knowledge and long hours to achieve something notable. Knowing your tools and platform inside out is a necessity - and the more modern your CPU/GPU are, the less realistic that is. When I was writing assembly for my 8MHz z80, I could easily hold the full instruction set + CPU register layout etc in working memory. When you're working on a modern i7 + GTX780, that's pretty much impossible, and you have to resort to abstraction layers and tools that inevitably lead to the situation described by the author of the article. It's a classic case of extreme restraints working in the favor of creativity.
Interestingly enough, my few friends who are still into coding demos don't do it on modern architectures - they're mostly sticking to the C64.