[Slightly OT?] Why It's Hard to Explain Rev

[Judy Perry]

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> You know the great Chris Crawford?!  He's a god. Loved Siboot -- nothing
> like it at the time.

Well, it's not like we do lunch or anything... he'd probably be
hard-pressed to remember my name.

I sought him out when I found that his great book was out of print but
that a PDF of it was available.  I asked for his permission to use it in
my class, and he was most agreeable about it.

I've been trying for ages to get him to come speak to my class, but he's
never in town at a good time.  He's said that he's amenable to the idea,
but, for instance, he wasn't in SoCal last term until I think June
(classes end in May).

I contacted him about Rev after receiving a recent Erazametrzz (? or
whatever it is) newsletter in which he mentioned that he was finally
porting his Erasmatron (again, or whatever it's called) software to PC
and how much fun Java was not.

I told him that if he'd ever used Hypercard and didn't hate the HC type of
programming environment, he should check out Rev.  He replied that he was
a real HC fan and echoed the sentiment many of us had regarding Apple
letting it die.

> but in this era of 3D fetishism it doesn't seem his
> contributions are as widely acknowleded as deserved.

I dunno... I've tried to keep a wandering eye on recdent game dev
texts/books and it seems that many still go out of their way to interview
him, get him to write a foreword or some such thing.  But it's definitely
an homage sort of thing.  And, he has deliberately gotten himself out of
the arena by veering into I believe it is interactive fiction (shades of
one of the Miller brothers?).

And I just LOVE his programming books/writings!

Judy