On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:36 PM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > "First off, the majority of languages (I almost said *all* but I do not > know *all* languages) were designed around the idea that resources are > scarce" > > "I want message passing and > multithreading to be so intrinsic in the language that you get them > without even thinking about it." > > Honestly i was thinking "great, yet another language!" when i started > reading but your ideas are interesting and i think there's some good > potential here (: To start out trying to do a new language that is worth doing takes either a huge amount of arrogance or an astonishing level of naiveté. Since I know that, I often wonder what I'm thinking to even consider doing. I guess the only other reason is because it will be fun and maybe it will actually be of use. Bob Pendleton > On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Thanks to everybody who replied. I haven't replied because I figured I >> needed some time to let my fevered imaginings simmer down. >> >> I'm going with the language #4 plus muxing in some of #5. >> >> A bunch of you expressed interest in helping with the stonewolf >> programming language. So, I'm going to post my thoughts on the subject >> here and see what you folks think about what I want to do. >> >> First off, what am I thinking about, why do I think we need a new >> language? There are lots of reasons. Most of them are outside of what >> is IMHO the "normal" way of looking at programming languages. >> >> First off, the majority of languages (I almost said *all* but I do not >> know *all* languages) were designed around the idea that resources are >> scarce. Think about C and C++. C was designed in the '72 and C++ was >> designed starting in '79. In '79 I bought 16 kilobytes of ram for my 2 >> megahertz z80 for $110 which is $327 in 2009 dollars. In '72 I could >> not afford to buy 16KB of ram. It was too expensive. >> >> OTOH, a little over a month ago I bought 4 gigabytes of RAM for $50. >> That 2009 $50 has the same buying power as $9.68 in '72 and $16.82 in >> '79 (we had a lot of inflation during the '70s). >> >> What is my point? Those two languages were designed when a megabyte >> was a *huge* amount of memory. In the '70s the hacker slang for a >> megabyte of RAM was "moby" as in the great white whale. The basic >> assumption forced on language designers was that memory was scarce and >> expensive. The same goes for processors. My aging AMD 64 dual core >> processor has more computing power than was available from all the >> computers on my university campus combined. The computer graphics chip >> on my mother board was literally science fiction in the '70s. Top of >> the line multimillion dollar graphic displays were used in the 1982 >> movie "Wrath of Kahn". Right now you can get better graphics >> technology for $10 in the discount bin at Goodwill. >> >> Another scarcity assumption drove the complete separation of >> C/C++/Java from their libraries. C was designed for embedded systems, >> telephone switches, where you could not assume that you would have a >> keyboard, or a disk, so all I/O was removed from the language. The >> same happened for things like the math library. In the bad old days >> only expensive mainframes (multimillion dollar machines) had floating >> point hardware. Even some of the biggest supercomputers didn't have a >> hardware floating point divider. You kept as much out of the language >> as possible because a runtime library couldn't add more than a few >> kilobytes to user programs if you expected the programs to fit in >> memory. Now days I can have hundreds of megabytes of runtime library >> and it won't affect my ability to run a program. In the future I can >> have a multigigabyte runtime and not worry about it at all. >> >> Even though languages like Java and C# were designed much later they >> carry forward a bunch of the assumptions of scarcity found in older >> languages like C and C++. >> >> The result of these assumptions is that programmers have to spend a >> great deal of time worrying about things like "does the interface use >> and int16 or an int32?". Why should I have to do that? Why not just be >> able to use a "number"? Why should I care how it is represented? I >> want to break all the assumptions I see built into these languages. >> Why did I have to write my net2 library? Why shouldn't a modern >> language just support asynchronous network IO the way it supports >> doing a floating point divide? >> >> Ok, a bunch of you just went Huh? what about efficiency? Well the way >> I see it is we will have at least two levels of programming going on. >> Just like we currently do with game engines. One level of programming >> worries about making things super efficient so the game runs fast >> enough, these are the engine programmers. The other level are the so >> called scripters. These are people who actually write the game but >> they do it in a language like Lua or Python that is embedded in the >> game engine. The scripters don't have to worry so much about the >> efficiency of their code because it is all written to use highly >> efficient code that already exists. If the scripters need a new >> feature they don't usually write it in the scripting language, they >> get someone else to write it in a language like C++ and add it as an >> interface that they can use. >> >> One way to think of it is to think of a language with all the parts >> (and much more) of a game engine built into the language rather than >> having a language built into a game engine. I really want a lot more >> than that. >> >> What I want is a language that is designed to make use of massive >> amounts of memory and hundreds or thousands of hardware threads that >> contains all the libraries I am likely to ever need and the ability to >> easily integrate libraries I didn't imagine I would ever need. >> >> Yeah, but what about efficiency? Let's define language efficiency as >> the amount of your life you have to spend to write a program a >> complete program. Or, as the ratio of the number of programs you can >> write in a year using different languages. If I can write one major >> program a year in C, and 1.5 per year in C++ then I want to be able to >> write 10 in Stonewolf. Which would make Stonewolf 10 times more >> efficient in terms of my life span than C. (BTW, if Stonewolf actually >> lets me get to 3 I would consider it a wonderful achievement.) >> >> I also want to get as far away from C based syntax as I can without >> creating something worse. I want control structures that can be >> automatically converted into high level parallel code. I want to make >> executable code a true full fledged data type so it is easy to >> replicate it across a "cloud" and to make it part of a class in a >> database. I want unicode to be built in from the beginning and not >> tacked on as an after thought. I want message passing and >> multithreading to be so intrinsic in the language that you get them >> without even thinking about it. >> >> So, that is what I want, what do you think? >> >> Ok, I thought I would start out with a fevered rant and see what kind >> of a reaction I get. I have actually been writing a speculative >> specification in fits and starts for 5 or 6 years. I'm holding off on >> posting any of that because I want to get other people thinking about >> all this without tainting your imaginations. >> >> Currently I'm messing around with what I call plumbing code just >> trying to see what I can do to make it fit into a Unicode world. I >> haven't found a suitable parser generator, I'm real picky about error >> reporting and recovery, so I'm planning to just do a hand coded >> recursive descent parser. And, I'm committed to using C++ as the >> implementation language. Lots of good reasons for using C++. The best >> one being that C++ makes a great extension language for Stonewolf. >> >> Bob Pendleton >> >> >> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 1:36 PM, Sami Näätänen <sn.ml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >> wrote: >> > On Thursday 17 September 2009 20:00:59 Bob Pendleton wrote: >> >> Ok, so I'm sitting here thinking about what I am going to work on >> >> next. Right now I am finishing up work on atomic ops for SDL 1.3 and I >> >> have promised to work on multiple device handling for SDL 1.3 on >> >> Linux. (it is sort of messed up right now.) But, that won't take a lot >> >> of time, I hope, so I'm thinking about new projects. So, I thought I >> >> would ask what you folks thought about some ideas and see if maybe >> >> y'all could make some suggestions? >> >> >> >> In no particular order.... >> >> >> >> 1) Write the space war game I always wanted to write. Yeah, that one, >> >> or is it three? No, I think there are least 20 games in that bag. >> >> >> >> 2) Write yet another 3D drawing/layout program. This would be the kind >> >> of program you need for drawing 3D items and doing level layout and >> >> design. Trouble is there are a million of these. Reason for doing it: >> >> I've never seen one that took less than *months* to learn to use. Or, >> >> they only run on Windows or Mac so I've never tried them :-). >> >> >> >> 3) Build a planet sim so you can create game worlds without having to >> >> do it by hand. This one popped out while I was thinking about #1. I >> >> spent a lot of time learning just how hard it is to subdivide a >> >> sphere. Spheres are really nasty. >> >> >> >> 4) Stonewolf, the programming language: I have started at least 8 >> >> times to develop a language designed for multimedia apps whose design >> >> is aimed at the future, not the past. Designed for 64 bit address >> >> spaces, terabyte disks, and hundreds of cores. I have settled on the >> >> name, Stonewolf. Two things that a language needs are a cool name and >> >> a developer with a beard. Seriously, look it up. All the cool >> >> languages were developed by people with beards. The name is important >> >> too. Consider that three of the greatest languages in the history of >> >> computing, Lisp, Scheme, and Smalltalk, were all pretty much killed by >> >> their names. No real programmer wants to spend all day lisping, >> >> scheming, or making smalltalk. >> >> >> >> 5) Spend the time meditating, reading sutras, and practicing Kung Fu. >> >> At least I would feel a lot better :-) >> >> >> >> Except for #5, I would, of course, blog writing and otherwise make >> >> lots of noise about what I was doing. >> >> >> >> Comments? Flames? >> > >> > Well I would do 4th first. >> > Then use it to do 1st and give the first try for the language (As a >> > proof that >> > it is complete). >> > Now it is time to do the 2nd and 3th in parallel using Stonewolf of >> > course. >> > >> > Oh and mux some 5 to the whole period to balance everything. >> > >> > PS. I would like to help as much as I can manage in that language design >> > and >> > development. >> > >> > --------------------- >> > To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html >> > >> > >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> +----------------------------------------------------------- >> + Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer >> + email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx >> + web: www.TheGrumpyProgrammer.com >> >> --------------------- >> To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html >> >> > > -- +----------------------------------------------------------- + Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer + email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx + web: www.TheGrumpyProgrammer.com --------------------- To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html