Digital Mark

Oh, so you worked with my ex-coworker.

It implemented a database. Giant branching if/for loop.

Get an 8-bit computer emulator, and learn 6502 or Z-80 assembly.

Usborne machine-code-for-beginners or any book by Rodnay Zaks.

It gets deeper from there, and modern CPUs are kind of awful to hand-hack assembly on, but you’ll at least learn how the computer really works!

print( ["even", "odd"][num % 2] )

If you need to avoid evaluating the wrong branch:

print( [lambda: "even", lambda: "odd"][num % 2]() )