literate beauty

You don’t care reject notations that explain a given domain in manner that fits the logic and flow of the observer’s thoughts. And not the manner and order imposed by the computer. You reminisce The Semicolon. And you will not feel especially warm ‘n fuzzy about this:

This example is lifted from Inform 7, a design system for text adventures interactive fiction. Crucially, it allows for rather complex worlds (“domains”, really) to be created in the same language with which future players will wander through this world. That’s profound, so stop snickering.

Why not have a zip of your morning Latte, lean back and squint your eyes a bit, let the caffeine do its magic and just imagine, for just this once, that the horrible system your working on right now was described like so. Wouldn’t that be bliss? For you, your client and whomever you hold dear…?

Of course, that’s just the caffeine talking. This could never work and all that  literate programming stuff is nothing but mumbo-jumbo.  Well, hop over to Inform anyway because interactive fiction text adventures are as fun to play as they were 20 years ago. That’s a subject you can trust me on.

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