What is this all about

Advances over the past decade in many aspects of digital technology has loosen up programmers' belt. We don't optimize as we used to. Hell, I usually have impression we don't do that at all, any more. Why should we care anyway, if:

• These days it's just cheaper to buy faster board than optimize code and design.
• It became ennormously nightmarish to optimize on modern; superscalar and VLIW designs. Currently everybody leaves the bloody job to the compiler.
• In software industry, where customer pressure is high, where minimal time-to-market delivery, high production cost and other economic buzz-words take over control, optimization is a noman's land. Tracking trends in USENET discussions leads to conclusion that DSP programmers are only professionals left on planet earth that really do bother to optimize. One could wonder for how long will it last yet.
• The thing that surely doesn't help are software patents. Although they were invented to help society improve and innovate, paradoxically they work in oposite direction. Some even claim it has become nearly impossible to use sophisticated methods without infringing on patent. (Although this issue as serious as it is, is totally ignored by most of scene coders.)

The current situation isn't at all bad for a day-to-day programming, where productivity is all that matters. So why the heck should we bother with optimizing at all? Because it's what the democoding is all about. Let's clear things up, we code demos to:

• Show off programmer's skills. How do you compare PC coders' skills in making efficient code if the hardware area is so broad and progress iterates at mad rate?
• Demonstrate machine's capabilities. Even beyond the scope of machine's hardware designer's imagination! That was always the magic aspect which made me itch which needed scratching. "Push the wall of impossibilities further" as is written in Roots's endscroll. I think that not everything what those old machines are capable of has been shown yet. Can it ever anyway?

There is only one true way to achive these objectives. Target a fixed platform. History shows that the machine's scene is in bloom when machine's a common platform.

• C64. Because of lack of options, they've choosen C64 with 1541 as a reference platform and it kept them happy (and still does). The only noticable fragmentation was caused by varing SID versions. Result? The code of C64 demos is pure wizardry, where code is often tweaked to every single CPU cycle!
• Amiga. When A500 with memory expansion to 1MB was on sceners' desks, scene was flooded with masses of demos. Advanced algorithms was developed, sophisticated methods invented. Then came AGA machines, and shortly after, hardware (mainly CPU) add-ons. Fragmentation began. Although compared to PC's it was nearly non-existent, so it helped to keep Amiga in the winner's position for the quite a lenghty period of time. These days even some guys want to force everyone to program demos for gfx cards. No wonder, amiga scene is in the state of agony.
• Consoles. Poor expandibility of consoles would make them a perfect hardware for scene coding. Although ultra high cost of quality developement tools stoped it from happening. This is changing a bit lately, as there appeared some third party semi-free tools. However lack of developer's attributes (keyboard & writable mass storage media) as a standard is still a barrier preventing it to reach a critical mass.

As we learn from the past, fixed platforms bring out an essence of democoding. We can get back there only by writing for the hardware which is the lowest common denominator in given niche, which simply means A500/1MB ram. I think that by rejecting the culture of instant upgrade in the scene domain, we can push the old spirit into it. We are in that comfortable position that we don't have to deal with as much costs (read our time is to be wasted.) After all we're doing everything here just for the fun of it, aren't we? I hope this document will help push the style of amiga scene developement back on the old track.