It is in the last part, but for me it is that I don't need to lookup or have to deal with what we decided is software dev in 2024. There are no libs: I write everything myself in asm (my preferred is z80 but I can do 68000 amiga stylez). Everything is in my head ; on my msx I write opcodes; not even an assembler needed! Wat is deployment? It already runs!

I guess that is indeed cosy and, for people who grew up with the horror that is npm and left-pad, not really understandable, but when they try, it is incredibly liberating.

I own most 70-80s systems (I mean brands, even vague east block, russian, hong kong ones; I miss a few but those are just too rare), they all work (I cheat; I can fix them, I do replace quite a lot of capacitors during the decades, but at least with these I can), and they are lovely.

Edit; I know I Can do the same thing on my linux machine; just use C and no libs, but for the reasons named in the last paragraph of the article, it doesn't relax me; I don't need more money, yet I cannot detach modern computers from productivity; it helps that with these 40 year old machines you cannot make money. So I do dream of a laptop running on an mcu with an eink screen that has 1 month of battery but no commercial power. And running common lisp at boot as that's all I need anyway. I am close to just forking over 10k to have one custom made, but still hope someone else will do it.