one of the things that annoys me, that I only complain about probably every other day, but it feels like it's been ages since i've had a good whine about this:

Endlessly recreating software from the 1970s and 1980s out of nostalgia.

I get it, I have nostalgia too.

but this stuff was designed around 1980s limitations, and it made 1980s usability comprimises because better hardware just wasn't available.

And yet, when we recreate the software, we copy the bad parts along with the good parts

this is what bugs me most about pico8 actually.

It's not the concept of limiting the games themselves that bug me- creativity from constraints is awesome! it's the having to create the games inside the tiny pixelated 128x128 window with shitty 40 year old eyes. I can't do it. it feels too cramped, like I'm making a miniature game in a bottle through a bottleneck with tweezers.

This is why we still have the "floppy disk" icon with no actual floppy disks. We make jokes about it, but not only do we not have floppy disks anymore- we don't *need* the save command anymore either. We have enough disk space that everything *could* just be getting autosaved to a spatial metaphore database with infinite undo and version checkpoints. Apple tried this at some point, and I admire them for trying, but their implementation was halfed assed and confusing.

@zens You have a much better grasp than I about the technical end of this(I had to look up what a spatial metaphor database was), but people do seem to have a hard time looking backwards and forwards at once. We go out into the world with the idea that the future has no limits and is wide open, only to re-make other's mistakes and find out what really works. We hold onto these hard-earned lessons, as we should, but maybe too much. Wisdom is having both mindsets.