[MUD-Dev] Java and Javascript

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 08:41 PM 2/26/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Jon A. Lambert jumping up
to say:
>
>Typically you
>open up a COBOL source file to maintain, find it was created circa 
>1970-ish, and 50 different hands have touched and mangled it all with
>their own unique style of coding.  Generally speaking, it makes most 
>mud code look well-written. :)

On the other hand, you could *read* COBOL. You didn't have monstrosities
like...

a=c.split('&'); for(i=0;i<a.length;i++) { a[i]=a[i].split(':');
this[a[i][0]]=unescape(a[i][1]); }

Not too terribly complex if you know C++, but you get the idea. ;)

>You ran the punched cards through this 5 x 5 x 5 foot metal cube that 
>would magically translate the the holes into Names, addresses, etc.

Ooh, nice. Ever do the old nasty trick of slapping a piece of glossy
packing tape on some random card in the input feed? That way the card would
slip off the track and gum everything all up. Similar to a lace card, but a
lot easier to get away with because it didn't take so much time to make and
you couldn't spot the gaff from the front of the card...


>It was loads of fun (heh) until the thing jammed and you literally 
>had to crawl inside the thing to find the eaten card.  

And there was always one real weirdo who was working on a forty thousand
line program and had his punch cards stacked three feet deep on a damn
cookie sheet. Inevitably, when using the punch card readers, this dork was
always right ahead of me. 

Some people had discovered the very expedient method of tripping this poor
guy on his way into the lab or knocking over his tray, thus ensuring that
he'd spend the next several hours trying to get his cards back in order and
giving all the other people a chance to get their work done, but I could
never quite bring myself to do that. I did suggest to him once that maybe
investing in a large supply of thick rubber bands would be a good idea, but
he didn't seem to understand the reasoning. It's really hard to believe
there were actually people out there who were LESS socially capable than I
was.

>This is probably why I prefer to clicking on happy colorful icons. 
>I like my programs to type for me, correct my spelling and grammar.
>Draw for me, play happy sounds when I do good things and sad sounds 
>when I do bad things.  Yea, I even like programs that try to code and 
>think for me too.  

I hate those sorts of programs... a perfect example: I start up Microsoft
Word. I define the heading styles for a document. I set up an automatic
table of contents. And then as I'm going along writing, I discover that
Word thinks some particular sentence ought to be a header. I don't want it
to be a header. I change it back to normal text, and it screws up the font.
I set the font back up, it changes back into a header. I change the font,
all the headers in my document change to match. I change it back, I remove
that text from the document, I retype it, Word makes it a header. I change
it NOT to be a header. I get frustrated. I idly look at the table of
contents, and this header I have deleted and restyled and messed with for
the past hour is entered a dozen times in the table of contents. Grrrrrr.
And as you say later...


>Of course they better do what I want, when I want 
>to do it, or things I would have liked to do if I had thought of it 
>or I don't use them.  

I have never seen an automated program that worked the way I expected. I
want each and every knob and dial exposed where I can twiddle it, and I
want it to do NOTHING AT ALL until I have verified all the settings and hit
the go button.

>I don't like my cards getting eaten and 
>crawling around in the machine to find them.  What I'm trying to say 
>is that what I really, really want (Uh) is a zig-a-zig ha.

"HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE... CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE!!!!!"

Sorry, I just watched Dune again yesterday. ;)

<sudden jump to being on topic> This fits in relatively well with the
concept of interfaces for MUDs. Some people want the engine to have common
sense. Some people don't. For example, in your average program, the
autotype and such shouldn't happen unless you turn it on, and when you do
have it turned on you should be able to frob lots of settings to make it
work like you want it to. What I see in most MUDs is an entirely incorrect
assumption that the interface which makes sense to the programmer is the
interface which makes sense. The climate of the internet, as many people
have noted recently, is very different; when MUSHes and MUDs were first
getting to be popular on the net, you could assume with reasonable accuracy
that anyone on the internet was a programmer or at least a college student
with some programming aspirations and ability. You could further assume
that the user who was logging onto a MUD was not only familiar with but
probably *expert* at Dungeons and Dragons, which was pretty much the only
game in town (no pun intended) at the time. So even if your game system
bore no resemblance whatsoever to D&D, you could explain it in D&D style
terms and reasonably expect to be understood.

Nowadays, there are hundreds of game systems, many of which are nothing
like D&D. The internet is available to nearly anyone, anywhere, regardless
of educational background or computer literacy. It should be obvious that
the interface of MUDs will need to change drastically in order to
accommodate these users, or the MUD community will slowly die. And therein
lies the rub -- not only do the new players need to be accommodated with
easier interfaces, but the old school players need to be accommodated with
*powerful* interfaces. And striking that balance is difficult. Obviously,
the direction of MUD interfaces needs to change, but the real question is
*how* it needs to change.