Video games have been an important part of popular culture for four decades now, as what started off being two lines passing a square-shaped 'ball' back and forth rapidly evolved into something much more. From the nostalgia-inducing pixelated sprites of the 8-bit era to the groundbreaking leap into the third dimension in the 1990s - games have always changed at a breakneck pace. It's almost as if the industry is afraid its audience will grow bored and abandon their hobby if they don't pull something new and awesome out of their metaphorical hat every five years or so. In order to sustain such rapid growth, programming has had to keep up (and sometimes even exceed) the evolution of technology and hardware. After all, there's no point in having the finest car money can buy if there's a drunk chimpanzee at the wheel. Programmers are the mostly invisible folks behind the scenes that bring order to the chaos that is video game development; their expert combination of ones and zeroes bringing the vision of the game designer to life. Without this technological black magic, Mario wouldn't grow when he ate a mushroom - he'd just be a fat Italian plumber with a strange taste in snacks. Without such prowess at their fingertips, games would be nothing more than a blank screen - and it's about time we celebrated all the fantastic concoctions of code that are quite the opposite.