A Decade of Code: Ten Snippets That Shaped My World

Written by Pixelambacht | September 25, 2026

Below are ten fragments of code that hold a special place in my history. Some were my own creations, some were borrowed, and others were simply hilarious.

Progress Tracker

• The Basics
• The Absurd
• The Low-Level
• The Utility
• The Visuals
• The Cheats
• The Corporate
• The Destructive
• The Mischievous
• The Artistic

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1. The Eternal Greeting

10 PRINT "HELLO , WORLD!" 
20 GOTO 10

I can't recall the exact moment I first typed this, nor if the punctuation was identical. Perhaps there were fewer commas or more exclamation marks. Regardless, the machine complied, endlessly greeting the world—and more importantly, greeting a wide-eyed child who had just discovered the power of communicating with a computer. The second line was the real revelation: a computer will do exactly what you tell it to do.

2. The JavaScript Paradox

join ( ' wat ' - 1 ) + ' Batman '

If you paste this into your browser's developer console, you'll witness a collision of vintage pop culture and programmer humor. It serves as a potent reminder that JavaScript is fundamentally absurd.

3. The Metal-Bender (6502 Assembly)

LDX #$ 00       ; Load X with 0
.loop LDA $ 2000 , X ; Load A from $2000 + X
      STA $ 0400 , X ; Store A at $0400 + X
      INX            ; X++
      BNE .loop      ; Loop until X is 0
      INC .loop + 2  ; Modify the source address
      INC .loop + 5  ; Modify the destination address
      LDA .loop + 5  ; Load the modified byte
      CMP #$ 07      ; Compare to 7
      BNE .loop      ; Loop again if not 7

Machine language is the rawest form of computing. It allows for self-modifying code, where the program overwrites its own instructions during execution. In this case, the loop processes memory from $\text{0x2000}$ to $\text{0x20FF}$, then the INC commands shift the addresses to $\text{0x2100}$ for the next pass.

(Note: Because the 6502 is little-endian, we use offsets of $+2$ and $+5$ rather than $+1$ and $+4$.)

Realizing this was possible proved that when you are this close to the hardware, anything goes.

4. The Windows Shortcut

\ "%*"

This tiny batch script provided a "poor man's touch" command for Windows. From the era of NT through Windows 7, I used this in the Total Commander mini-shell to instantly generate empty .txt files.

5. The Visual Debugger

border : 10px solid hotpink ;

This is essentially the console.log() of the CSS world. When in doubt, make it hot pink.

6. The Memory Hack

POKE 9450,173

By forcing a specific byte into a precise memory location, you could suddenly grant yourself infinite health, currency, or lives. This didn't just allow for cheating; it provided the epiphany that every element of a game is manipulatable if you know where to PEEK and POKE.

7. The "Optimization" Loop

for ( i = 0 ; i < 1000000 ; i ++ ) {;}

I once heard a story about a developer named Wayne who handled slow weeks like this:

"Whenever we have those really slow weeks—you know, the kind where we don't actually fix any bugs—we just drop one of the zeros on the loop. Then we tell the manager we hit speed issues, but after some 'deep-juju optimization,' we fixed it and can finish the request next week."

For anyone who has suffered through a tedious, aimless project, this kind of "productivity" has a certain charm.

8. The Linux "Cure"

rm -rf /

Back in the 2000s, if you had a Linux issue, you went to IRC. Often, the "helpful" community would suggest the magic cure ultimate destruction: log in as root and execute rm -rf /.

9. The School LAN Scanner

{$M $4000,0,0 } {16 Kb stack}
Program Skan2 ; uses crt , dos ;
var a , b , c : char ; b1 : byte ; str : string [ 3 ]; Ends : boolean ;
begin
  Ends := False ; a := 'a' ; b := 'a' ; c := 'a' ;
  repeat
    inc ( c );
    if ( c = 'z' ) then begin inc ( b ); c := 'a' ; end ;
    if ( b = 'z' ) then begin inc ( a ); b := 'a' ; end ;
    str := a + b + c ;
    exec ( 'z:\public\full.exe' , str );
    if ( whereY 10 ) then readln ;
  until KeyPressed or Ends ;
end .

In the early 90s, my friends (the self-proclaimed 1337 h4x0rz) and I explored our school's new LAN. We discovered that usernames were three letters long and often kept default passwords. We wrote this crude scanner in Borland Pascal (Version 2.00!) to hijack dormant accounts. We had our fun, and then we moved on.

10. The CSS Poem

* { transform : translateY ( 24vh ); text-align : center }
* :before { animation : a 9s 1 e + 9 linear ; content : 'Roses are #F00' }
@keyframes a {
  10% , 15% , 35% , 40% , 60% , 65% , 85% , 90% { opacity : 1 }
  12% , 37% , 62% , 87% { opacity : 0 }
  25% { content : 'Violets are #00F' }
  50% { content : 'All my base' }
  75% { content : 'Are belong to you' }
}

An animated poem crafted in exactly 280 characters of CSS. No HTML, no JavaScript—just a style block in an empty document. This was designed for the era when Twitter expanded its limit from 140 to 280 characters, allowing us to share snippets for CodePen. I'm particularly proud of using 1e+9 for the duration; it's a clever way to represent "nearly infinite" while saving characters.

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