Send More Paramedics

Kris Burm on programming languages

The title of this post is intentionally misleading. Kris Burm, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is a game designer¹ responsible for a highly praised series of abstract strategy games called Project GIFP. In an interview given circa 2000 Burm describes the challenges of game designers like himself who create purely thinking games without a theme.² The interesting aspect of this interview is that with a well-executed SED command the post could be made to refer to the challenges facing non-mainstream programming language designers. For example:

The biggest problem you face when introducing a new abstract game, is how to make a player aware of the difference between a good move and a bad move. Most will get the impression of wasting time if they don’t start having a clue about what to do after, let’s say, two games. If the click hasn’t come by then, most will never start a third game.

Could be changed to:

The biggest problem you face when introducing a new programming language, is how to make a programmer aware of the difference between a gem and a kludge. Most will get the impression of wasting time if they don’t start having a clue about what to do after, let’s say, two minutes. If the click hasn’t come by then, most will never start a third minute.

Over the past few months I’ve become fascinated with the game design space and over and again I run into aspects that mirror the computing industry.

:F