News You Can Bruise for 2006 May 1 (entry 2)

(3) Mon May 01 2006 19:52 PST: Inform 7 looks awesome, as promised, but I can't use it because it's a Windows-and-Mac-only IDE. But this is actually good because I shouldn't be writing IF right now. Sure makes me want to start again though.

Comments:

Posted by Nick Moffitt at Mon May 01 2006 23:49

A pity about the license, really. If it weren't still in that broken idiotic 1980s shareware mindset, we could have ported it.

Posted by Adam P. at Tue May 02 2006 10:53

The IDE looks cool, but I'm not too hot on the language itself. I think the whole "it looks just like English!!!" thing is going to result in less readable code overall (already most of the example code looks like a COBOList was translating the I Ching). It seems like it'll frustrate beginners, too, since they'll tend to try stuff that would be perfectly acceptable in English but doesn't fit I7's syntax. I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with it though (I'm thinking some kind of crazy constrained writing interactive fiction or something? Or has that already been done?).

Posted by Leonard at Tue May 02 2006 11:59

I'm just glad the old, inscrutable syntax is gone (or, more likely, hidden). But maybe the new syntax will be just as bad in different ways!