The Misunderstood Wait: A Lesson from 1987

In 1987, when I wrote 20 GOTO 10 on an Apple II, it felt like the computer was tirelessly executing my commands. Watching HELLO WORLD scroll frantically across the screen, I saw it as a symbol of pure power.

It took thirty years—navigating race conditions in distributed systems and inference latency in AI models—to suddenly recall that infinite loop. I finally understood that the 6502 wasn’t just “running”; it was “waiting.” It exhausted itself in every clock cycle just to hold onto a sliver of logical certainty.

Back then, I thought technology was about “speed.” Now, I realize it is about how to consume time gracefully. That 17-year-old boy never noticed that the greatest code isn’t about how fast a machine can run, but about keeping logic breathing even on the brink of resource exhaustion.