Inform 7

This is meant to be a fun post about a language I bumped into many years ago when I was a backend server engineer working in the games industry. It’s not a language a lot of people have been exposed to and my article is simply meant to only get you curious about it. If you want to know more go check it out yourself — http://inform7.com

I love to show programmers something like this little story from the Inform 7 recipe book . . . .

“The Power of the Keys”

Afterlife is a room. “Fluffy white clouds gather round you here in the afterlife.” The Pearly Gates are a door in Afterlife. “The Pearly Gates — large, white, wrought-iron and splendidly monumental — stand above you.” Heaven is a room. The Gates are above the Afterlife and below Heaven.

St Peter is a man in the Afterlife. “St Peter, cheery if absent-minded, studies his celestial clipboard.”

Before going through the Pearly Gates:
say “St Peter coughs disarmingly. ‘If you’d read your Bible,’ he says, ‘you might recall Revelation 21:21 saying that the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate being made from a single pearl. I really don’t know why people keep imagining it like the entrance to some sort of public park — oh, well. In you go.’”;
end the story.

Test me with “enter gates”.

Often they glance at it, and then are a bit confused, “I thought you were going to show me a new language?” — and then they are shocked when I explain that I just did!

Inform 7 is a highly domain-specific programming language consisting of a high level of abstraction and very readable source code used for creating interactive fiction. Inform 7 compiles to Inform 6, which can then be compiled and run on Z-code (of Zork fame) or Glulx virtual machines. The first time I ran across it, I didn’t even know I was looking at a language. It’s such a departure from the more traditional languages I use daily and even years later I’m still fascinated by it.

So I just wanted to use this space to encourage you to check it out!