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Daniel Wellman
blog.danielwellman.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Daniel Wellman is a software developer whose blog features programming stories and software development essays.
What HN saysHN commenters repeatedly link his story of a Tron lightcycle game on an Apple IIgs, where a bug let the cycle run into system memory.
16HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
8stories submitted
222story points
7 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Real-life Tron on an Apple II GS15 people · 220 points · first shared 2008 · 18 comments on HN
- 2Five Things "This is Spinal Tap" Taught Me About Software Development1 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jml7c5 · 2026-04-18
That reminds me of "Real Life Tron on an Apple IIgs". There's something so charming about system memory being misinterpreted.
https://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs…
barbs · 2022-12-13
Reminds me of a similar story of someone creating a Tron lightcycle game on an Apple IIgs. They had created a bug so that the lightcycle could travel off-screen and into memory, causing all sorts of undefined behaviour.
https://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs…
bitwize · 2018-06-26
colejohnson66 · 2017-07-04
Lewton · 2013-12-17
that reminds me of this awesome story
http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.…
nitrogen · 2013-07-02
This has been posted before[0], two[1] and four[2] years ago, and is a delightful and fascinating read every time. It's fun to anthropomorphize the AI running amok in the system's memory, and wonder if we'll ever see something analogous happen with more sophisticated AIs in the future.
[0] http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.…
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087367
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326356
asdfs · 2012-12-01
Reminds me of this blog post about a Tron game that didn't check memory bounds either: http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.…
DannoHung · 2010-03-05
> I did have some problems throughout the contest with my choice of C++ -- in fact without Valgrind, my entry may never have run correctly. (Turns out one of my algorithms was "escaping" off the border of the map and scribbling in RAM) But hey, I've been dealing with problems like that for more years than I care to count right now.
:D
http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.…