I actually use that line in my book, it'sRealNC wrote:Ah, yes. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Now, multithreading is not really "sufficiently advanced technology", but let's pretend ;-)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"If it is distinguishable, it's not sufficiently advanced."
- Anonymous
Something I thought about with respect to Hugo, can we create a different file format so that the interpreter can be bumped up from 16-bit to 64-bit? So that an older 16-bit application would work but the new format would support more advanced features, such as
* 64-bit integers
* support for floating point (I have this memory of it not allowing it or not providing it)
* 1024 properties, up from 128
* object numbers are 64 bit or perhaps 32bit, possibly signed
* fixing some of the default assumptions in the compiler, so a reference in a room to a string as a destination means you want to print the string and not go there, not attempt to enter the string as if it was a room (possibly make constant objects have a negative number or something to distinguish them from enterable objects) the current behavior in the compiler makes no sense as there really no reason to do it that way
* True string support at least as good as Basic had back in the late 1970s
* Unicode support to encourage use in other non-latin-based character sets
* Support for displaying text right-to-left
* More system functions to support more of the machine's functionality
* Test capability so a program can query the interpreter to determine what's available on this machine
I am thinkling; Hugo can be more than just a game system, it could be used to support any text-based command system or application where the user clicks on things to select them, which might be useful for computer-assisted- / computer-based- instruction and for giving tests.