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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Comments about AGT.
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Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 17:04:04 GMT
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Carl Muckenhoupt (baf@max.tiac.net) wrote:
> From what I've seen, AGT's flaws are not chiefly in its limitations.
> Rather, it's all in the pitfalls.  It's generally possible to do things
> the right way, but it's so much easier to do things the wrong way that
> that's the more usual method.

> I'm thinking specifically of the way AGT extends its vocabulary.
> Suppose you have an opening in the wall, large enough to put a stick of
> dynamite into.  The right thing to do is to make that opening an object.
> The easy thing to do  is to code a special syntax "PUT DYNAMITE INTO OPENING".
> You and I would never do this, of course, but to someone just learning
> AGT as their first programming language, it seems eminently reasonable.
> Thus, you get phantom nouns that only exist for certain verbs.  Is this
> the fault of the language?

> Well, the language allowed it, didn't it?

Hm. In a sense, Inform has the same weakness: it's easier to do

Extend "put" * "dynamite" "into" "opening" 

than to make objects and add "Receive" clauses. Why don't people do this? 
I think it's because of the big fat manual and the big fat standard 
library, which make it somewhat clear how to proceed. (Not *totally* 
clear. :-)

And the very large mass of sample code; but after N years, AGT must have 
had a lot of sample code. Did it just suck?

Honestly -- not to overinflate certain egos -- I think there's simply a 
tradition of quality that got established by the earliest TADS and Inform 
games. It's not that it's impossible to do good AGT games, but people 
didn't get into the habit.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
