Part of what got me into software was this: no matter how complex or impressive the operation, with enough time and determination, you could trace each step and learn how a tap on a joystick lead to the specific pixels on a screen changing.

There’s a beautiful invitation to learn and contribute baked into a world where each command is fully deterministic and spec-ed out.

Yes, there have always been poorly documented black boxes, but I thought the goal was to minimize those.

People don’t understand how much is going to be lost if that goal is abandoned.