This comment from the creator summons such mixed emotions:
"13 January 2017 (continued)
For those of you suggesting I should make an assembly language version of this: I'd love to. But I'm up for tenure this coming year, so unless you have a plan for how I can either get a peer-reviewed academic paper from the work, or else some sort of federal grant, then I should probably be working on less fun projects :("
From the News, he says: "For those of you suggesting I should make an assembly language version of this: I'd love to" and goes on to say how he won't have time...
At the very least he might want to look into the TASC compiler, which was/is a Microsoft Applesoft compiler that makes BASIC programs run 2-20x faster than w/the on-the-fly interpreter.
I love projects like this. I wish I had the desire to just do something cool, whether or not its useful or utilitarian. Accomplishment strictly for the sake of accomplishment is pretty admirable.
I agree it doesn't have to be utilitarian to be admirable. That's called art. But you seem to be saying it's particularly admirable because it's for its own sake? That is a weird POV to me.
That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't call this art, and it certainly has no point, at least not a utilitarian one. You wouldn't make money, and it probably wouldn't even be that fun to play. It's just cool.
It's mastery. Doing something because it's a challenge you find interesting, not because there's something external to be gained. It's pretty zen, really.
You have a very low bar for calling something "zen". I'm good at flipping bottles of mustard and such behind my back without dropping them. No point really, just fun. Zen?
I just now realized this story I'd been ignoring isn't about the game "Portal" for the Apple II. Activision published a game with that title in '86 about exploring the future internet after the death of all mankind.
I did also once find a web-based version of its content, which used hyperlinks between pages to simulate the transitions in the original game. Can't find it again now, though, and the only version I still have would be in the source content directory for my old conversion pipeline that fed the Plucker reader on PalmOS. If there's interest, I'll dig that stuff out of cold storage and see if I can get it up and going.
I've been working on a quine in Applesoft BASIC that calls into the system's token table in order to detokenize itself as it reads itself out of program memory. It's been a fun ride so far! And really given me a new appreciation for modern text editors, too.
"13 January 2017 (continued) For those of you suggesting I should make an assembly language version of this: I'd love to. But I'm up for tenure this coming year, so unless you have a plan for how I can either get a peer-reviewed academic paper from the work, or else some sort of federal grant, then I should probably be working on less fun projects :("