"Nobody programs in machine language" (was: Modern

It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated: But then again, since an off-the-shelf graphics engine *is* available, it frees the company from the expense of writing a graphics engine and allows them to concentrate on other things that can use the engine (perhaps a program to allow architects to take 2D plans, extract them to 3D walkthroughs, changing wall textures and the like). I came across this neat hack the other day. What could be done using a webcam, a ton of MP3s and precanned software to run both? And realistically, what does a webcam have anything to do with MP3s? Not having to worry about details like writing the low lever code to drive the webcam and play the MP3s, it allows a higher level of tinkering (it even includes the use of Lego bricks): http://www.flatfeetpete.com/musicbox/ Now, how many different MP3 decoding libraries are there? Sure, there are plenty of MP3 *players* out there, but decoding libraries? Not many (I suspect there may be one or two). Okay, so we're straying from the topics of this list, but if you search hard enough, you'll still come across people doing innovative stuff with computers even today. -spc (But don't think that the graphic engines are reengineered ... they are, almost constantly ... )