My second programming language was Sinclair BASIC on the ZX Spectrum 48k. Today at work I participated in discussions on AI strategies at Aarhus University and how these new technologies disrupt and engulf everything. It's no longer just software that eats the world; it's the machines.

In these discussions we touched upon things that the machines are now better at than us: chess, programming, math. We also touched upon the fact that the machines unfortunately not only take the dull things, but also what's fun. And my god, it's fun to program. It's fun to solve the series of small riddles that become a finished program. I've never been a gamer; instead I've programmed. To me, these are two very similar activities – though the latter is easier to get paid to do.

Anyway, in today's discussions a couple of us went down a small rabbit hole reminiscing about the good old days of programming the VIC-20 and ZX Spectrum. We both really vividly remembered drawing our first circles and how we used $\sin(x)$ and $\cos(x)$ without knowing what they actually were – it was a few years before any math teacher taught me trigonometry. Gosh, it was fun.