[mark_round]

Still got mine. Still write code on it, too[1] although it's now connected to the Internet with a Spectranet card. My 9-year old self would have been astonished that there's still a lively scene surrounding the Spectrum and some quality games still being released for it today. Or that I'd still be writing Speccy BASIC code projects[2] in the 21st century!

It's remarkably fun to tinker with still, and I don't think it's purely nostalgia for me. Although there's certainly an element of that at play, I think it's more the "zen" like simplicity that's appealing these days of hugely elaborate cloud-native stacks and hardware so complex there's no way anyone can hold it all in their heads. The Spectrum and other 80s home computers in contrast were so accessible and people did (and still do) astonishing things within those limits. The Speccy no doubt launched hundreds of thousands of careers, mine included.

Plus, with those limitations, games simply had to be playable to be successful as they couldn't on gimmicks! I honestly prefer a good game of Manic Miner over any modern title. The Spectrum & Amiga years were the glory days of old-school gaming for sure!

[1]=https://www.markround.com/blog/2021/12/21/devops-for-the-sin... - If you've ever wondered how to do CICD and client/server for an 8-bit computer from the '80s :P

[2]=https://jsspeccy.markround.com