Kes – Hunting the Asphynx: Roguelikes, Provenance, and You

NetHack and its associated variants are an incomprehensibly huge spiderweb of ideas: Decades of different programmers refining each other’s concepts and code, rewriting each other’s ideas, and building on each other’s work. It’s not a community that anyone could have ever envisioned or crafted intentionally, and that’s what makes it so beautiful.

In the midst of this enormous game of programmer telephone, it’s easy for wires to get crossed sometimes. What if someone were to, for example, cite a nonexistent book in their source code? How long might it take for someone to notice?

The answer is not measured in years, but decades.

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