A very brief excerpt from our Challenger’s code:
Horatio can be remembered. Horatio is not remembered.
In this small piece of text, there is a poignancy. The power of Inform 7 as plain language is manifest. Even mathematics, pure numbers, can stir the soul of a fluent reader, and any code, likewise, might do the same. But there is something to be said about code that strikes directly into the heart of a person’s everyday mode of thinking.
The Challenger’s code is not striving effortfully toward poetry. It is totally functional. Its functionality, in fact, is almost bare-bones. No flourishes. No extraneous words. A very neat and tidy arrangement of Inform 7, written to achieve a specific technical effect.
But it is something more, too, isn’t it?