ConfPad

Investigating programming languages that never went mainstream can help us better appreciate the subtle trade-offs that are required when designing a programming language. In “Remembering MegaZeux: Concurrent, Assembly-ish Actor-based Programming for Teens”, we will focus on one such language in particular. In 1994, a small community of teenagers started using Robotic: an unusual, forward-thinking programming language intended for creating computer games inside the game creation system MegaZeux. We’ll examine the design of Robotic and how it compared to academic research and industrial practice at the time, as well as how it reflects current trends and practices. We’ll contemplate the unorthodox choices that Robotic made and how these helped position it as a viable introduction to programming for so many aspiring game developers. Through these examples and comparisons we will better appreciate the broad scope in programming language design that exists outside of the languages that we most commonly experience.