Robert Lafore

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Robert W. Lafore (born March 11, 1938) is a computer programmer, systems analyst and entrepreneur. He coined the term "interactive fiction", [1] and was an early software developer in this field. [2]

Contents

Career

Lafore worked as a systems analyst for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the early days of microcomputing, he wrote programs in BASIC for the TRS-80 [3] and founded his own software company.

Lafore has written a number of text adventure game s, for which he coined the term "interactive fiction", for the company Adventure International. [4]

Lafore has authored a number of books on the subject of computer programming, including Soul of CP/M., [5] [6] and Assembly Language Primer for the IBM PC and XT. [7] [8] Later books included C++ Interactive Course, Object-Oriented Programming in C++, [9] [10] Turbo C Programming for the IBM, [11] and C Programming Using Turbo C++. [12] At one time he was an editor for the Waite Group publishers. [5]

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References

  1. Nick Montfort (2005). Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. MIT Press. pp. 7–. ISBN   978-0-262-63318-5.
  2. Dale Peterson (July 1983). Genesis II, creation and recreation with computers . Reston Pub. Co. p.  196. ISBN   978-0-8359-2434-4.
  3. Michael J. Tresca (16 November 2010). The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. McFarland. pp. 100–. ISBN   978-0-7864-6009-0.
  4. Neal Roger Tringham (10 September 2014). Science Fiction Video Games. CRC Press. pp. 483–. ISBN   978-1-4822-0389-9.
  5. 1 2 Book review of Soul of CP/M by David Carroll. in Dr. Dobb's Journal for Users of Small Computer Systems. People's Computer Company. 1984.
  6. InCider. 2. W. Green. 1984. p. 139.
  7. Ziff Davis, Inc. (11 March 1986). "PC Mag". PC Magazine: The Independent Guide to IBM-Standard Personal Computing. Ziff Davis, Inc.: 23–. ISSN   0888-8507.
  8. Byte. McGraw-Hill. 1986. p. 297.
  9. Tim Wegner; Bert Tyler; Mark Peterson; Pieter Branderhorst (1 October 1992). Fractals for Windows. Waite Group Press. p. 360. ISBN   978-1-878739-25-4.
  10. The New York Times Book Review. New York Times Company. June 1995. p. 35.
  11. Computer Book Review. CBR Publications. 1988. pp. 6–15.
  12. WorldCat report for Robert Lafore