S1aY3R wrote:I've played with around 5-10 systems, and my personal favourites were Quest, Adrift, and Inform. I would check these out. I'm biased toward Inform and Quest myself, although I like Adrift a fair bit. David will be biased toward Adrift of course, for very valid reasons, and the rest of the community sticks to Quest. All three have their merits and uses, although Quest is still in its infancy compared to the other two. It's nearing adolescence, however.
henrytj wrote:
Those are in fact, the 3 I am looking into. Quest and Adrift seem most similar as they are, or have as an option, point and click interfaces. Inform is an attempt at making a natural language programming system, which of coures, has its trade offs.
My thinking at the moment if I do put together a course is to split it between Inform, and Quest or Adrift. The course would be targeted more for creative (writing) type people rather than programmers. (Not saying programmers can't be creative writers, I like to think of myself as one, but seems the point of these projects is to widen both the making and use of these kinds of games.)
cangelo wrote:
Tads is another option and it's free and lends itself closer to standard programming languages (primarily C/C++). It's very nice but does not include a visual interface. It's very mature and includes alot of libraries (for free too). I personally would recommend that one in place of Inform but if creative writing is the focus, I would probably skip either of those options so that you don't have to teach programming concepts and the students focus more time on the class content rather than semantics of the languages.
cangelo wrote:"henrytj"
I don't like languages that force their coding style on me.
Like FORTRAN?
henrytj wrote:"cangelo"
[quote="henrytj"]I don't like languages that force their coding style on me.
Like FORTRAN?
cangelo wrote:
I didn't jack FORTRAN for it's purpose or use nor would I ever intend to.
I was making a play on 'languages that force their coding style' which FORTRAN is one the the biggest culprits. I just found that statement amusing.
C has not made programming cryptic. Programmers with poor design skills and great laziness have caused that
With that said, I could careless abou C/C++ nor have I used them in 10 years nor plan to anytime soon.
By the way, I graduated from comp sci eons ago and have been programming as a career for over 20 years, including the aforementioned FORTRAN.
Oh geez - now you're gonna say you work for IBM and helped them to capitalized random letters in their application names/directory structures.Now isnt EndIf easier to read than endif or ENDIF?
You must be talking about output formatting? And maybe quotes..Plus C makes heavy use of punctuation, especially / and \
Yes - I HAD to quote this one too..I don't like languages that force their coding style on me.
...And Fortran wasn't? .. Sorry - this is quite unfair of me to keep repeating Fortran, and quite unwise.Plus, C, was invented as an alternative to assembly language systems programing
...Except to bring easy, general, cross-platform, extendable, customizable, fast, programming to the masses...C, on the other hand, has made few such accomplishments
I don't think C/C++ quite qualify for the "goto" spaghetti code messes of old.computer programming cryptic
Oh hell yeah! People need to actually think more about the data rather then the language itself..Programmers with poor design skills and great laziness have caused that
I wouldn't be surprised.. People are drifting through sci-comp classes, and getting qualifications and not fully understanding what they've written.. It truly depends on the data - which again, I think isn't thought about enough.. I think it's more real-life though to have data treated as objects, and makes for easier and more understandable code on the whole.Lately I have read several commentaries that object oriented programming is being over-used and even abused.
henrytj wrote:
For me, using mixed "CamelCasing" improves readablility, including language KeyWords. Now isnt EndIf easier to read than endif or ENDIF? For me it is and my efficiency improves when I can use it.
henrytj wrote:
C makes heavy use of punctuation, especially / and \ which due to my left-right dyslexia, I have a lot of trouble with.
henrytj wrote:
B and D do not confuse me as b and d do. Upper case has no mirror image letters. When I jot down pseudo code I do it in all upper case and they type it in in mixed CamelCase.
THe current style of C coding, with punctuation hanging in mid line by itself, looks terrible to me. I think from a human factors standing, C is a bad choice of a language for general programming.
cangelo wrote:
The only punctuation I recall is
; at the end of a statement
and { } blocks for if/then, loops, and functions (which I find much more readable than IF/ELSEIF/ENDIF as long as the 'programmer' puts the { } on separate lines). I'm not sure what / and \ are for unless you are talking only about text formating with the printf like functions. And for the punctuation I mention, it lets you format those items how you want and doesn't 'force' anything on you...IE:
if something {
. . . do something;
}
else {
. . . do something else;
}
or
if something
{
. . . do something;
}
else {
. . . do something else;
}
or if you just want to be silly
if something {do something;}else{do something else;}
NOTE: '. . .' used because I don't know how to put a tab in this forum message.
henrytj wrote:"cangelo"
The only punctuation I recall is
; at the end of a statement
and { } blocks for if/then, loops, and functions (which I find much more readable than IF/ELSEIF/ENDIF as long as the 'programmer' puts the { } on separate lines). I'm not sure what / and \ are for unless you are talking only about text formating with the printf like functions. And for the punctuation I mention, it lets you format those items how you want and doesn't 'force' anything on you...IE:
if something {
. . . do something;
}
else {
. . . do something else;
}
or
if something
{
. . . do something;
}
else {
. . . do something else;
}
or if you just want to be silly
if something {do something;}else{do something else;}
NOTE: '. . .' used because I don't know how to put a tab in this forum message.
I on the otherhand find reading the single characters { and } on a line by themselve to be very distracting. If I coded in C I would be tempted to do somethnig like
If Condition
...{Do;
....Some;
....Commands}
Else
...{Do;
....Something;
....Different}
For me the above is easier to read. I once showed something like the above to a C programmer during a argument similar to this and got a harsh, almost death threat, in return.
cangelo wrote:"henrytj"
If Condition
...{Do;
....Some;
....Commands}
Else
...{Do;
....Something;
....Different}
For me the above is easier to read. I once showed something like the above to a C programmer during a argument similar to this and got a harsh, almost death threat, in return.
Fair enough and C will let you do that, which is why I don't understand how C is forcing it's 'style' on you?
Tr0n wrote:If Condition
...{Do;
....Some;
....Commands}
Else
...{Do;
....Something;
....Different}
I prefer:if Condition {
do;
some;
commands;
}
else {
do;
other;
commands;
}
It just seperates out the various parts better and looks neat.
If (Condition) Then
Begin
Statement(s)
End
ElseIf (Condition 2) Then
Begin
Statement(s)
End
Else
Begin
Statement(s)
End
EndIf
If (Condition) Then
Statement(s)
ElseIf (Condition) Then
Statement(s)
Else
Statement(s)
EndIf
If (Condition) Then
Statement(s)
ElseIf (Condition) Then
Statement(s)
Else
Statement(s)
EndIf
Tr0n wrote:
Now, if they had an image of a handicapped person that'd be taking it a bit far -
Tr0n wrote:
but using it as a shortened "Gnu IMage Program" is fine.
Where did the 'i' go? It's "Eu-nicks", but yes - that's joked about occasionally.. Was orriginally named "Unics" - which was in contrast to "Multics" - multi -> uni.(when spoken is the same as a term for a castrated harem guard)
ASDA doesn't make any sense to me - it's not an anagram, and it's surely a bad name?But "Gnu" means nothing to most people.
henrytj wrote:No, C will not let me do that because it will not let me type in mixed case keyworks "If" and "Else." And, yes, mixed case for me can make that much of a difference. ANd there is no reason to require case sensativity in keywords (in a compiled language) as there are no "IF" keyword that does something different than "if" or "If." So after decades of mixing my case as I have done with pervious languages, I have to becarefull what I type in C and its related languages. That is forcing a style on me.
#define If if
#define Else else
Tr0n wrote:
"AIDS" how cheery does that actually sound until you know what it is?
Freak wrote:"henrytj"
No, C will not let me do that because it will not let me type in mixed case keyworks "If" and "Else." And, yes, mixed case for me can make that much of a difference. ANd there is no reason to require case sensativity in keywords (in a compiled language) as there are no "IF" keyword that does something different than "if" or "If." So after decades of mixing my case as I have done with pervious languages, I have to becarefull what I type in C and its related languages. That is forcing a style on me.
If it matters that much to you, can't you do:
#define If if
#define Else else
Or, you could write a small filter than lowercases everything not in quotes, then create a makefile rule that uses it to convert your own extension to .c.
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