Decker Fantasy Camp 2026

itch.io

50 points·RodgerTheGreat··9 comments

Decker is one of the most insane codebases I've ever seen. It's almost entirely in one file in a very dense format:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JohnEarnest/Decker/refs/he...

I've read and written a lot of C over the decades but this borders on being an IOCCC entry...

Looks like "Whitney C" https://www.aplwiki.com/wiki/Whitney_C

Not even remotely. it's just plain vanilla C, with dense formatting. Whitney makes extensive use of macros to completely change the language.

On the other hand, while I completely agree about the C codebase, the Javascript is at least comprehensible. I've toyed around with adding a feature or two, and almost got there.

How is that anything but the work of a masochist. There are absolutely zero reasons to write code like this.

I can only recommend looking at all the Decker author's projects. He's done work on APL languages, GUIs, interactive programming, etc. https://beyondloom.com/things/index.html

A cool person making cool things!

The slippery slope game editor is pretty cool. https://beyondloom.com/tools/slipedit.html

You can click the link at the top to play the original game. It's a 5-10 minute adventure that I enjoyed, fwiw

It's both native and web-based. Web version: https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/tour.html

Click File -> Cards... to see how the guided tour is constructed.

Some past discussions of Decker:

4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377964 - "Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS"

2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38985409 - "Decker – A HyperCard Replacement"

2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292181 - "Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics"

If y'all never seen Decker, it _is_ cute:

https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Decker

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