You are in a dark, damp cellar with narrow passageways to the north and east. On the west is the bottom of a steep metal ramp which is unclimbable.
> go north
Cellar
12
Attic
You have moved into a dark place. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> what is a grue
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light.
> light the lantern
The brass lantern is now on.
This is the attic. The only exit is the stairway down. A large coil of rope is lying in the corner. There is a nasty knife here.
> take the rope
Taken.
> go down
> go west
> go down
The trap door crashes shut, and you hear someone barring it. Continue reading
Living room
The living room opens to the east. To the west is a wooden door, above which is strange gothic lettering. The door is nailed shut. There is a trophy case here, and a large oriental rug in the center of the room. A battery-powered brass lantern is on the trophy case. Above the trophy case hangs an elvish sword of great antiquity.
> open the trophy case
Opened.
> put the egg in the trophy case
Done.
> read the strange lettering
The engravings translate to “This space intentionally left blank.”
> move the rug
You drag the rug to one side of the room, revealing a closed trap door.
> open the trap door
The door reluctantly opens to reveal a rickety staircase descending into darkness.
> take the lamp and the sword
brass lantern: Taken.
sword: Taken.
> go east
> go up
Kitchen
You are in the kitchen of the white house. A table has recently been used for the preparation of food. A passage leads west and a dark staircase leads upward. A chimney leads down and to the east is a small window which is open.
A bottle is sitting on the table.
The glass bottle contains:
A quantity of water
On the table is an elongated brown sack, smelling of hot peppers.
> go down the chimney
Only Santa Claus climbs down chimneys.
> go west
Behind house
You are behind the white house. Paths lead into the forest to the east and northeast. In one corner of the house is a small window which is slightly ajar.
> examine the window
The window is slightly ajar, but not enough to allow entry.
> open the window
With great effort, you open the window enough to allow entry.
> enter the house
Up a tree
You are ten feet above the ground, nestled among large branches. Beside you on the branch is a small bird’s nest. In the bird’s nest is a large egg encrusted with precious jewels, apparently scavenged by a childless songbird.
> take the egg
Taken.
> go down
> go south
> go east
Like me, on Facebook
Well here’s something I never thought I’d write in Fabulous Adventures in Coding when I started this blog more than ten years ago:
Today is my first day at Facebook.
It still feels weird to say it. But as it turns out, Facebook has a language design team and they have very generously asked me to be a part of it.
Now perhaps it is clear why I have been working frantically to learn OCaml for the last couple of months; several of Facebook’s compilers are written in OCaml, and so I’m going to need to have a working knowledge of that language very quickly. I figured that writing a Z-machine interpreter (and, spoiler alert, a debugger) in OCaml might be a good way to get some practice in while waiting to start on the real thing! And I figured that learning F# and then having to un-learn all the ways in which F# differs from OCaml would not serve my interests.
It is still not entirely clear what exact aspects of developer tools I’ll be working on. Facebook has a lengthy and intensive “boot camp” process to get new hires up to speed, so I’ll be heads-down on that for the next eight weeks or so – which is another reason why I wanted to have a lengthy blog series already queued up.
Odds are pretty good that I’ll be working on the Hack compiler first; Hack is a gradually typed extension to PHP that looks remarkably like C#. I’ll post more – lots more! – once I have my feet under me here.
Another fabulous adventure! I can’t hardly wait!
Forest path
This is a path through a dimly lit forest, curving from south to east. A large tree with low branches stands by the edge of the path. On the ground is a pile of leaves.
> count the leaves
69,105.
> climb the tree
North of house
> go north
You are facing the north side of a white house. There is no door here, and all the windows are boarded up. A narrow path winds north through the trees.
> go north
West of house
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. You could circle the house to the north or south. There is a small mailbox here.
> open the mailbox
Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.
> read the leaflet
[Taken]
“WELCOME TO ZORK, a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. No computer should be without one!”
Fabulous adventures in coding 