Inform 6
Shares rank 133 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
People recommend Inform 6 as a simple, structured object-oriented language for writing text adventures, valued for its readability, long support history and ability to run on very old machines.
People recommend Inform 6 as a simple, structured object-oriented language for writing text adventures, valued for its readability, long support history and ability to run on very old machines.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, easy-to-grasp syntax
“it's really easy, it's like the perfect OOP language to teach text adventures to older Elementary kids”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Infidel goes wild” “it's a dumb simple OOP language where the structure it's almost self-evident”
Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at a much larger scale” “Yes, very easy to grasp and games will be much lighter than Inform7”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “The Visible Zorker: Zork 1” - Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “The foolishness of "natural language programming" (1978)”
- Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at a much larger scale”
Structured object model for games
“it's a really structured language for literal ingames objects mapped to programming (OOP) objects”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “WorldGen – Text to Immersive 3D Worlds” “the Inform6 language targeting the ZMachine interpreter has objects with implicit behaviour”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Vibecodeprompts treats prompts like infrastructure” “far more objects and interactivity for puzzles thanks to Inform6”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Stop using natural language interfaces” - Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Microsoft makes Zork open-source”
Runs on old or small machines
“port them to Inform6 and target the Z5-Z8 machine (better with Z8) and it will run eveywhere”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I Wrapped the Zorks with an LLM” “you can code the games with Inform6 and Inform6lib with maybe a 286 with DOS”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “The 1987 Game "The Last Ninja" was 40 kilobytes” “a 'lite' version of Inform6 tuned for smaller machines”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Running a Minecraft Server and More on a 1960s Univac Computer” - Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at a much larger scale”
Long-lived with mature tooling
“it's been around for a long time and is well supported on many platforms”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Infidel goes wild” “has a good Emacs mode and decades of tools”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Adventure Game Studio: OSS software for creating adventure games”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
20 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“i6's syntax can be easier for traditional programmers”
“a really simple OOP language to create text adventures”
“I6, under 32 and a Pentium. And maybe even less.”
“it's a dumb simple OOP language where the structure it's almost self-evident”
“create some game by hand (no AI used, at all) with Inform6 or better”
“Puny Inform and try doing things by yourself”
“it's really easy, it's like the perfect OOP language to teach text adventures to older Elementary kids”
“it's been around for a long time and is well supported on many platforms”
“the syntax it's dumber than VB6, Lua or anything else”
“Yes, very easy to grasp and games will be much lighter than Inform7”
“a 'lite' version of Inform6 tuned for smaller machines”
“you can code the games with Inform6 and Inform6lib with maybe a 286 with DOS”
“even more with Puny Inform”
“has a good Emacs mode and decades of tools”
“port them to Inform6 and target the Z5-Z8 machine (better with Z8) and it will run eveywhere”
“far more objects and interactivity for puzzles thanks to Inform6”
“the Inform6 language targeting the ZMachine interpreter has objects with implicit behaviour”
“that is much easier to reason about”
“it's a really structured language for literal ingames objects mapped to programming (OOP) objects”
“I want my code to look more like code”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.