Archive

I recently came across HomebrewCPU.com which documents the creation of the Magic-1 CPU. It also includes a small OS which serves the website magic-1.org. As someone who’s wants to build a prototype CPU and write a small kernel, it resonated with me. Both that someone shared my goals (“Touching the magic”) but also that he really pulled through and made it.

While I don’t think I’ll be building a CPU anytime soon, the idea that someone can be motivated to actually build this is frankly amazing. On his website, he writes a common comment is he must be single and have too much free time. Turns out he married with 3 kids. What seems to motivate him is incremental work (“a few hours here and there”) and recognising that this is a multi-year long project.

I think this is partly a solution to the motivational problems I sometimes face. When I come up with an idea, my excitement turns into motivation for a single night. I write a ton of scaffolding code (such as structures) and when I run out of time, I have little reason to continue as there’s nothing to show but build errors. Instead, what I am now doing is building the smallest program that does what I need and I improve it a little every day until it’s doing what I want.