Way back, when I first started to get into computers, one “thing” I really enjoyed were demos. If you aren’t familiar with what a demo is, the basic idea is they are a single executable program which plays an animated movie to music. The amazing part is the animation is literally all coded by hand (i.e. not made in some flash program or something). Additionally, the music is completely original and, typically, equally phenomenal.

I came across this webpage a while ago which puts a great label on what a demo is: “Programming as Art“. While the demos linked to on this site are a lot different than the ones of old (but not too different), they are worthy of watching nevertheless. It is amazing what can be done with under 200K.

I particularly liked “I feel like a computer” in the honorable mention section.