Sunday August 26 2018, C3.3, 13:30 AEST

Learn about 36-bit integers and writing interpreters in Python!

Colossal Cave (Adventure) is the original text adventure, written in FORTRAN IV. We explore using software archeology to write a Python interpreter for FORTRAN. We use BeeWare’s Batavia JS Python interpreter to run in the browser.

Colossal Cave, also known as Adventure or ADVENT, is the original text adventure. It was written in FORTRAN IV and there is practically no way to run the original program without translating it. We’ll explore software archeology to write a Python interpreter to run the FORTRAN code as-is, without translating it. Come learn about pre-ASCII and 36-bit integers and writing interpreters in Python!

And, we’ll show how to use BeeWare’s Batavia Python interpreter (in JavaScript) to execute the program. FORTRAN IV in Python in JavaScript in your browser!


Watch 'Colossal Cave Adventure in Python... in the browser!' on PyCon AU's YouTube account
Christopher Swenson

Christopher Swenson
Twilio
@chris_swenson
http://swenson.io

Dr. Christopher Swenson is an architect and principal engineer at Twilio, and is enthusiastic about programming, software engineering, mathematics, writing, and open source. Previously, Christopher worked as an engineer at Google and Simple, and as a code breaker, computer scientist, mathematician, and supercomputer programmer for the US Government. Christopher holds a Ph.D in computer science from The University of Tulsa and wrote the book Modern Cryptanalysis. Christopher is maintains a moderately popular open source sorting library, and is also a core contributor to the BeeWare project.