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Coding is a Text Adventure
Wired News is running a story about a new approach to crossover working and gaming turning your coding into a MUD-style adventure. Playsh is a "narrative-driven 'object navigation' client, operating primarily on the semantic level, casting your hacking environment as a high-level, shell-based, social prototyping laboratory, a playground for recombinant network toys." Great, now they are combining two of the most horrible addictions in my life.
I've already been eaten by a grue.
"PUT KEY ON HASH TABLE" Segmentation Fault: Wumpus Detected
I had always wondered if somebody would attempt to make a mud out of programming. Everytime I start stepping through my debugger, it feels like I am on an adventure.
Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
... that's what I usually tell people when they ask me if I'm into games. Most people don't know what this is, so I add "it's a text adventure" :)
So the "Person" class is the main adventurer. While he is running through the tunnel to the mainframe lands, he hear's a request from someone calling themselves "User" that states he must first solve a puzzle for reformatting these characters to the one expected by the mainframe giants. 10/14/1999
Later, our hero Person signs up for a banking account and pays his credit card bills using the AutoBillPay spell. Person is then kiilled by the surcharge monster.
Great, now they are combining two of the most horrible addictions in my life.
Hate to break it to you, but heroin and hookers were combined a loooong time ago...
This guy's the limit!
Unhandled Exception: You have been eaten by a grue.
You are in a maze of twisty subroutines, all alike. You may be eaten by a deadline.
I hope Gibson was forward thinking enough to take out a patent on this!
1. Write futuristic novel
2. Patent every concept in the book
3. Wait for people to make it happen
4. Blind-side them with your 1337 patent!
5. Profit!!!!
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
"Great, now they are combining two of the most horrible addictions in my life."
Now imagine how the productivity numbers would skyrocket if they managed to mix programming and pr0n.
(Granted, I've already written plenty of obscene code in the past...)
Wired News is running a story about a new approach to crossover working and gaming turning your coding into a MUD-style adventure.
Go North
Find Door
Open Door
Leave Work
Find Home
Go Home
Find Bed
Go to Sleep
END
Did I win?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
About someone who wrote a Zork styled system for configuring linux, here on slashdot many years ago. One of the comments that came back was this:
>Take SCSI
Cannot do that
>Take SCSI
SCSI did not budge
>Take SCSI
You got SCSI
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
It's dark. You light a lamp and you see a slashdot poster doing something with his hand. It's moving back and forth rapidly. Suddenly you are blinded by a white sticky substance. You drop the lamp and the light goes out.
Colossal Cave Adventure
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Does anyone have screenshots?
Your monitor glows brightly in front of you. (You also have a small headache, which you've attributed to being stuck with a CRT. However, accounting always tells you to "man up" when you request a flat panel.)
A coworker, Jeff, comes by and mentions that there's a bug in the program you wrote for the company. Seeing as how it's been six months since the last bug report, you eye him cautiously and ask him what he does before the bug appears. "Click a button, or something" is his resposne. You're suddenly reminded that you have a doctor's appointment to check your blood pressure on Monday.
You have:
-a headache
-pencils
-potential high blood pressure
-a nagging coworker
-a deadline
Action:> Attack co-worker
Jeff, who moves around the office as opposed to sitting in a chair for eight hours like yourself, nimbly dodges as you attempt to fling a pencil into his eye. "Uh, sorry," you say. Jeff shrugs.
Action:> Look at Jeff's computer
You follow Jeff over to his computer, where he sits down and violently moves the mouse to wake it up. "Why didn't you leave the screen as is when you came to get me?" you ask. "Oh, this problem is from last Tuesday," he answers. You wonder if you can move the Doctor's appointment up. "Okay," he says, as he opens Acrobat Reader. He presses some buttons, not caring if you're able to see what he's doing, and suddenly gets a blue screen of death. "See?" You realize that all he did was somehow hard crash Acrobat Reader- a program completely unrelated to your work.
Action:> Ponder homicide
There's not a jury in the world.
Jeff is looking at you expectantly.
Action:> give up
As Jeff stares at you expectantly, you suddenly burst into tears. Leaning against the wall of his cubicle, it cracks and sags backwards as you slow sink to the floor and assume the fetal position. The men in white suits arrive a half hour later.
Total score: -2
Play Again? y/n: n
You are on a plain that stretches as far as the eye can see. There are many ones and zeroes whizzing by above your head.
Obvious exits are:
formatData(scroll),
writeData(scroll),
deleteData(scroll).
You see:
a scroll with writing on it.
Email Man, Printer Guy and Browser Boy are here.
>r
What do you want to read? [ijk or ?*]
>?
Variables
i - tmp
j - tmp2
k - tmp3
(to self): "Wait, what were the variable types for each? hmmm... how about "
>j
As you read the variable, they ALL disappear. Your fun weekend plans crumble into tiny threads and fall apart! Debug this five-year-old garbage you wrote instead - oh look, you didn't use comments or naming conventions!
(to screen): "ARRGGHH!! I KNEW I should have dropped everything on the Simulated Altar when I passed it!"
This is not my sig.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Now all I need to write is xyzzy!
*insert examples here*
I think if you remove the asterisks that already is a valid AppleScript example...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)