[OT] Interactive Fiction is an Oxymoron

Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel at merlintec.com
Mon Jul 30 22:42:29 UTC 2001


He, he... these threads reminded me of all the fun I had fitting an 
adventure game into an HP 41 calculator (not the big 41C types!) some 
20 years ago.

One key aspects of my world domination plan is that people should learn 
Smalltalk as their first language. Converting people who started with 
something else is such a pain - why bother? Those who are already 
programming today will be a minority in a few years, so it's no big 
deal if my plan leaves them out initially.

The problem is that I have never read any Smalltlak book or tutorial 
written for non programmers, which is totally amazing considering what 
the language was created for. If I am wrong about this, please send me 
the references right away.

Anyway, I came up with the idea of writing just such a book in the form 
of an adventure game. Solve the puzzles and learn how to program! But 
then I started thinking that the book should be available in printed 
form in your nearest bookstore. If I am going after non programmers, 
then going after them in a non computer environment might be the smart 
thing to do.

But as Andrew pointed out, you can't have both a good story and a good 
simulation. So it can't be both a good book and a nice interactive 
"tutorial". The book by itself is unlikely to do much good (though I 
learned Smalltalk from the "blue book" this way and C from the K&R 
book, I am not a very typical person...) so I have to suppose the 
reader has access to a computer.

I can't decide: how to get the best of both worlds? Should they be two 
entirely different products?

-- Jecel




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