Just for Fun

Because I programmed to the bare metal I had to start off from the BIOS, which is the early ROM code that the computer boots into. The BIOS reads either the floppy or the hard disk, and in this case, I had my program on a floppy. The BIOS reads the first sector of the floppy and starts executing it. This was my first PC and I had to learn how all this was done. This all happens in what's called "real mode." But in order to take advantage of the whole CPU and get into 32-bic mode, you have to go into "protected mode." There's a lot of complicated setup you have to do to make this happen.

A great mathematician doesn't solve a problem the long and boring way because he sees what the real pattern is behind the question, and applies that pattern to find the answer in a much better way.

Sometimes the laws don't make sense. But sense is what you strive for. You want to be able to look at the solution and realize that you came to the right answer in the right way.

The same is true in computers. You can do something the brute force way, the stupid, grind-the-problem-down-until-it's-not-a-problem-anymore way, or you can find the right approach and suddenly the problem just goes away. You look at the problem another way, and you have this epiphany: It was only a problem because you were looking at it the wrong way.