I was in high school when the demoscene took off in the 80s. It forever tainted my view of software development as full of lazy programmers not bothering to optimize code as hardware got better and better. Myself included.
I founded a demoscene club in college and it was always whiplash to go from the code I saw at our end-of-year demoparty and whatever crap I saw during my summer internships
The time-shifty nature of demoscene is really interesting to me. The community seems small but influential, so general awareness of it moves more like word-of-mouth, even in the internet age; people make incidental contact and pick up some small but incomplete aspect of it, often years after the initial release. People in 2026 enjoying work made in 1992; people making new demos in 2026 that look like they're from 1992.
Hits harder than the same dynamic in pop culture because these things are so little-known, but they find their way to your eyes and ears across the gulf of time all the same.
The time-shifty nature of demoscene is really interesting to me. The community seems small but influential, so general awareness of it moves more like word-of-mouth, even in the internet age; people make incidental contact and pick up some small but incomplete aspect of it, often years after the initial release. People in 2026 enjoying work made in 1992; people making new demos in 2026 that look like they're from 1992.
Hits harder than the same dynamic in pop culture because these things are so little-known, but they find their way to your eyes and ears across the gulf of time all the same.
Check out this one though: https://demozoo.org/productions/13188/
The dithering on the voxel demo there had me truly stumped, watching as I am on a phone. Colours I never saw in my Speccy days!
https://syntaxparty.org/ is on in a couple of weeks if you happen to be in Melbourne.