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Show HN: Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan

(christopherdrum.github.io)
156 points ChristopherDrum | 3 comments | 14 Apr 25 03:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available.

There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.

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bruce511 ◴[14 Apr 25 04:50 UTC] No.43678153[source]▶
Its interesting to see how developers get into a mindset, based on their life experience.

What we're seeing here is 40 year old code compile and run with minimal effort. Largely because the C language has respected backwards compatibility.

Yes, there were breaking changes along the way, but they were trivial to resolve in hours. And (more interesting) the author believed that to be true and so persevered.

I saw this recently as well. I run a lot of programs on Windows. Many are 32 bit, written in the 90s for Windows 95, or 98. They all still run. Microsoft bends over backwards to keep things compatible.

I also get to write a lot of web API clients. I tell customers that it won't work forever. Web APIs are constantly changing. The service (especially Google) will change something soon to break it.

The people building those APIs are expecting only currently-maintained apps to run. They have no concept (or experience) of 40 or 30 year old code "just running". Crumbs, if you get 5 years out an API client you're doing well.

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1. BrenBarn ◴[14 Apr 25 06:47 UTC] No.43678684[source]▶
I think part of that is because those old Windows apps were distributed and forgotten about. There was no update procedure for many of them, and if there was it was just "buy a new disk" or at most "check the website and download a new EXE". Now that people have always-on internet connections, they expect to be able to get things instantly, and companies then expect to be able to push their updates instantly, and other companies expect that they can push their own update if someone else breaks their API, and so on and so forth until everyone expects everyone to have "the latest version" of everything.

It's the era of constant updates. I find it pretty annoying.

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2. bruce511 ◴[14 Apr 25 08:33 UTC] No.43679257[source]▶
... all presuposing of course that the authors of that code are still around, and still want to make the effort of updating it.

In the enterprise world lots of software is more than a decade old, and no one is prepared to "update" it. The mindset in that space is for things to have longevity.

It's more of a mindset I think. Microsoft is clearly very focused on keeping things running. Apple (as a contrast example) is happy to change architecture, remove 32 bit support, and so on.

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3. BrenBarn ◴[14 Apr 25 18:44 UTC] No.43684680[source]▶
I agree it's a mindset, I just mean that that mindset has kind of coevolved with a bunch of other stuff.

Even Microsoft seems to be slipping. It seems like these days the (unstoppable!) Windows updates may actually change functionality and UI, which was much less common in the past. And of course the new versions of Windows are more aggressive about updating. They still maintain backwards compatibility for running third-party programs, but I feel like their mindset used to include more stability in their own software as well.