Talk:Don Woods (programmer)

Untitled
This is a cool story. However, I don't know that it belongs in an encyclopedia article. Anecdotes are fine, but more facts would be better. - Dreamword 20:52 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. - Hephaestos 02:21 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

(Personal Story)

An old-school hacker, great programmer, and all-around cool guy. I used to work with Don in the mid-1990's at ClariNet Communications and he had a map on his office wall that a fan of Colossal Cave Adventure had drawn by hand showing the layout of the entire cave system, in 3D. It was really cool. :-)

The funny thing was, I didn't know Don had done Adventure for the first month or two that we worked together, and one day I saw someone posting on Usenet and getting all excited flustered at hearing from "*THE* Don Woods".

Me: "Don, why does your name provoke such a reaction in people on the Net?"

Don: "Did you ever hear of an old text-based dungeon game called 'Adventure'?"

Me: "Oh yeah! I used to play that back in 1981 on Apple ][ computers! It was great!"

Don: "Most of the geeks in Silicon Valley say the same thing. I created it."

Me: "Oh." :-)

After that, we had numerous conversations about the game, and I got to see the latest versions he was working on. Even 20 years later, he continued to tweak and improve it, and often kept a copy running on a machine wherever he worked.

I haven't seen Don in about 4 years. If someone knows how to contact him, send him my way.

You can find out more about the history of the game and the later offshoots like Zork here.

User:PatrickSalsbury

perdurable ? -- Zoe


 * Oddly, an actual word meaning "very durable" - so durable it can be considered permanent. ('per-' + 'durable' as an intensifier, like 'per-'+'lucid' -> 'pellucid'). I cannot myself say how perdurable Don Woods is, but I suspect he falls somewhat short of eternal. -- Someone else 03:57 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * In this context, does that make the use of the word POV? -- Zoe


 * Probably not, but I have no qualms about changing it to a word that won't make the reader go 'huh?' . -- Someone else 04:13 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * After contacting the original author by the (nowadays nostalgic) means of sending an e-mail to crowther@sitename, where sitename was every host currently on the Internet...

Nostalgic? I believe spammers still use this technique. ( 15:53, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

can anyone fix dead link?
The "Are you really a wizard" link is dead, but I don't want to remove it in case anyone knows where that file can now be found. Allen 16:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Removed it. --Allen 07:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

On the /Internet/?
Right from the beginning the article has said, "then distributed it on the Internet." The game was developed around 1975. Our seismology lab had just gotten onto the ARPAnet that year, and we played ADVENT on a PDP-10 at BBN, if I remember correctly. I used a crummy VT-52 terminal with a "bell" that honked.

Is there some weird and unknown consensus that the term "Internet" subsumes "ARPAnet"? If not, I'll probably change the term unless someone else does it first. Snezzy (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)