It took me about ~2 months to get to an OS that could boot from an MBR, get into a raw kernel that only used memory space (no filesystem or persistence, this was intentional), and had a basic prompt running in kernel mode.<p>What I really want to return to is what I call dual-mode programming. Taking the older Apple computers and the Commodore 64 as an example, they were comparatively speaking an absolutely joy to program on. You started with BASIC and then eventually progressed towards manipulating memory locations in asm to draw graphics and make whatever you wanted.<p>Wasn't because the programming languages used were anymore powerful (asm and BASIC? Come on...), it was because they were frankly better designed as far as "whole systems" go.<p>Functionality isn't exposed the way it used to be. It's difficult to put anything functional together on a computer these days if you're a rank beginner.<p>Sure, I can slap something together in Python, but that's because they're walking right around the system's complexity by living in their own little world (the interpreter and the .py libraries).<p>I guess I'm hoping for what no one really cares about anymore. They just want to add more layers of abstraction to compensate for their own short-sightedness and poor discipline.