[DGD] LPC birthday?

[Erwin Harte]

bart at wotf.org wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:06:50 -0500, Erwin Harte wrote
>> Felix A. Croes wrote:
>>> bart at wotf.org wrote:
>>>
>>>> According to my information, Lars wrote the first version of the lpmud driver
>>>> in april 1989, and the first public version was available in the summer
> of 1989.
>>> Fast worker.
>>>
>>> I guess that must have been a 1.x version.  Though I've never found any
>>> source code online that predates LPmud 2.x, I think it had no inheritance
>>> and no arrays. 
>>> Perhaps the exact date can be tracked down in an old
>>> rec.games.mud.* archive.
>> We did some digging in Google's usenet archive and think you are off
>> by a year.
> 
> With regards to the public release, that could well be true. The April 1989
> date for the very first version is based on the credits file from the 3.1.2
> source.

That time-line doesn't make sense when comparing it to what the games
say about themselves:

- Genesis' own web-pages state they opened in early spring of 1990,
  which is in line with when Lars released 1.3.

  http://genesis.tekno.chalmers.se/moreinfo/faq

- Nanvent/Nanveant existed before but the LPmud version didn't come
  into existence until September '91:

  http://groups.google.com/group/alt.mud.lp/msg/d192661e814766f5

And there are more inconsistencies to be found.

That said, it's certainly possible that Lars (privately) started
working on LPmud in '89.  It's not something you write overnight.

Erwin