My primary school friend still writes 8-bit games

We've known each other since the days when games were loaded from tape. I thought we'd talk about the old days, but it turned out they aren't old days for him at all, he still takes part in 8-bit computer programming competitions.

Apparently the competitions last a weekend, at the start they get a brief for the game they have to write, and by the end of the weekend the game has to be ready. To make it in time they have whole frameworks written in advance, so at the competition they don't start from scratch, they just write the game itself.

When I got back I looked it up out of curiosity, and sure enough, such competitions exist, in Poland for example graWITACJA in Kraków, where you get 36 hours for a game and learn the theme just before the start.

What amused me most was that along the way I came across Mad Pascal, a Pascal compiler for the Atari and the Commodore 64. So if I wanted to, I could go right back to where I started, since Pascal is where I began.