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Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

I first played Colossal Cave adventure on a terminal in my mom's office in the late 70s. She was a FORTRAN programmer for a defense contractor, and would take me into the office on school holidays when she could not find daycare. She'd plunk me down in front of the terminal, and I'd play text based games all day.

I think this is what got me into computers and is basically responsible for me choosing my major and later my career..

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In the late 80s, I was in a middle school Unix class. My friends and I spent most of the time playing MUDs over telnet. They're all in tech jobs today.

That sounds amazing! Where was your middle school?

Kansas, USA. The class was put on by Washburn University.

See - that's what I'm waiting to come to VR, the MUDs.

I want to strap on my VR helmet and be in a dark bedroom with only the glow of the CRT for light at 3 AM in the morning MUDing with someone on the otherside of the world who I'd been trying to set up a scene with for weeks for IC reasons.

MUD = Multi-User Dungeon

IC = ?

MUD is a general term for text-based roleplaying game - Multi-User Dungeon has always struck me as an unhelpful definition since it applies a lot more focus on mechanical components than most MUDs actually have.

IC is in character.

I can explain this better with an example I believe. While playing as a jeweler in Minas Tirith in a MUD I had need to consult with an armorer PC to receive some in-character training on basic armorsmithing as Gondor was, at that point in the plot, in desperate need of arms and armor quickly so all of the PCs who had any sort of forge capable of metalwork were trying to make an effort of supporting the war effort. While there were lots of weaponsmiths in EST the one armorer I knew well and enjoyed playing with happened to be a Chinese player who occasionally overlapped with EST. I ended up staying up late one Saturday night and having a very fun scene with them, but there were serious logistical complications and a bunch of DMs sent back and forth to make sure we were both available.

You can re-live your childhood online:

https://grack.com/demos/adventure/

It's the 1984 variant version[1] but close enough. It's also retro styled as well!

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure#Later_...

That's my project! :)

Glad someone posted it. The source is available here: https://github.com/mmastrac/adventure

It's very interesting, did you and your mom ever talk about your respective programming career? How was it like when she was a programmer?

Sadly, she was a heavy smoker, and passed away from lung cancer when I was still very early in my career.

The one time we "worked together" was when I got a summer internship at another defense contractor, programming in FORTRAN 77 on VAX/VMS. Coming from C & UNIX at the university, VMS and FORTRAN was quite different. She taught me the basics of the language over a weekend. I never really adjusted to the column layout stuff.

I recall we would use used punch cards for scrap paper when I was a kid. Pretty much every note or list she wrote was on a used punch card.

1976 I was part of a US National Science Foundation project for high school students. Someone had a teletype on 300 baud modem in the house we stayed at, and played it there. Good times, and also highly formative.

Same here, my mom worked at the local community college. The other detail was the computer had no display, only a line printer. Spewed out quite a stack of paper by the end of a day playing Adventure.

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