I keep coming back for more with Inform between my busy times on my professional projects, as a hobby, but I feel like I’m fighting to the death with this language. The “like English” idea with this language doesn’t seem to make it easier for me to use at all. Is it worth learning Inform 6 to try to understand it better? The words mean nothing without context, so I feel like I only learn each kind of thing piecemeal, but the underlying structure has yet to reveal itself to me.
[rant]I tried writing my own simple game in C#, and while I had success at doing what I was doing, I realized it would take me a lifetime at my pace to get anywhere because there are so many things to take for granted out of a pre-built system like Inform. Once I get the hang of a thing in Inform, it is really obvious how handy how much is already there under the hood in the pre-made system. When I was working on my own system, making the parser read commands for the player to move from one room to the next without any weird results was time-consuming enough, let alone getting to wearing and equipping items… I’m really impressed with you guys who wrote the inform parser and the standard rules and everything after just seeing the tip of the iceberg behind a project like that!
So, while I’d be theoretically capable to write a game in a language I already know, I’d never finish it in practice. I just want to get to the writing dangit! I code for a living, I was hoping it’d be easier to have a hobby writing the fiction, but with some variables and interactivity, but didn’t think it’d be such a chore to do the coding on my spare time!
I thought it might be intriguing to learn Inform 7, since it’s so different. I thought it would actually be easy to use, but I just don’t know why I feel it’s a constant struggle for some reason. It’s as if its not the “code” as in logic, like I’m used to, but “code” as in a dialect or slang, where you just have to learn all the specific rules, I dunno… not knocking Inform, clearly the problem is I’m dumber than I thought, but learning Inform appears to be nearly impossible even though I self-taught myself to do professional projects in C derivative languages…[/rant]
tl;dr
Anyway, my point is this… if I am not finding the “intuitive” language of Inform 7 helpful, is it worth learning Inform 6 to try to fix that, or should I cut rope and start trying to use TADS instead? Other recommendations (besides “quit you loser” )?