The second demo highlights how sometimes you can use absolutely horrid sleights of hand to achieve something beautiful – and how you can perhaps find beauty in those sleights of hand, too. It reminds me of the quote attributed to Teller (of Penn & Teller):

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

Penn & Teller talk a lot about how there are only two keys to their success: going further than others would think, and not worrying about employing inelegant tricks in service of something that would appear to be of utmost elegance.

Today’s computing limitations are different than the ones from the 1980s. But a lot of this attitude can still be helpful, even four decades in, and even if your work seems as far away from the demoscene as you can imagine.

Source: “If you just ignore those pesky impossible details, the demo looks deceptively simple.”