[gameprogrammer] Re: "Mission Efficiency" - Blue Collar coding

On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 09:49, Jason Clark wrote:
> Don't feel bad Bob,
> 
> I use Python daily (my company has chosen it as the language of choice for
> user apps), and I detest the white space formatting, it prevents some of my
> normal white spacing conventions I like to use for clarity and the ability
> to jump from opening to closing braces (more than 1 error where my logic was
> outside of a loop it was meant to be in).

Thanks, I was starting to feel like a real idiot...

> 
> It does have some pros over our previous language of choice TCL/TK, mainly
> its syntactically similiar to C and they didn't go out of their way to
> rename common functions so I can use standard man pages to find out more
> about a function. On the other hand, while its similiar, it can be just
> different enough to cause grief if you have to spend time jumping from
> language to language. I do spend quite a bit of time relying on the compiler
> to catch stupid syntax errors (missing semi-colons).

TCL/Tk. I did about a year of serious programming in a mixture of TCL/Tk
C and C++. TCL is frustrating to me because it is *so close* to doing
what I want it to do. The syntax is just slightly annoying, the lack of
classes is painful. And it was just almost too hard to integrate C/C++
into the run time. 

> 
> At the end of the day it is as powerful as PERL, but without as much pain
> for me, and before the PERL religious zealots attack, I said 'pain for me'.
> I understand the usefullness of PERL and work in it when required, I just
> have no love for it.

I have to agree with you about Perl. I program in it when I have to.
Don't like it, don't dislike it.

> 
> What I think would be nice is to invoke the Python runtime environment and
> have it read my C program and run, so my script and compiled code source all
> look and feel the same. Now that would be useful!!! Okay, well maybe not so
> much for strings, the entire point of using the scripting language is to get
> away from walking through character arrays.  I know you had started a thread
> a while back on what would make the perfect language to write games in, but
> you had taken that offline.  I would be interested in any feedback you'd
> care to share though.

I didn't take it off line, the discussion just died. No feed back at
all.

> 
> Honestly i'm beginning to think games require a whole new paradigm. The
> graphics portions (and internal datastructures) lend themselves well to
> being organized in an objective manner, the system integration (signals,
> threading) and much of the mathmatic areas seem to scream for a functional
> layout, while the AI is a wonderful candidate for an associative set of
> relationships (Go Prolog!).

Yep. I can see that. I think that there is a lot of thinking that needs
to be done about a data structure that subsumes the concept of
structures/classes/matrices/databases. Some kind of a persistent
associative store that can store code as well as data.

And, I been thinking about the thread and storage management
requirements for the run time of a language. I think you have to start
at both ends of the problem to do this design. You need to work back
from the desired semantics and forward from what is implementable.

> 
> Just a couple of thoughts, those with more experience in the game industry
> can feel free to correct me,
> Jason.

Fell free to kick in any thoughts you have at any time.

                        Bob Pendleton

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Bob Pendleton
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 6:24 AM
> To: Gameprogrammer Mailing List
> Subject: [gameprogrammer] Re: "Mission Efficiency" - Blue Collar coding
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 07:18, Latimerius wrote:
> > On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 02:48:03PM -0500, Bob Pendleton wrote:
> >
> > > Python uses indentation as part of its syntax. Which is just plain
> > > wrong.
> >
> > It just plain doesn't matter IMHO.  This must be the least important of
> > a language's features.
> >
> > I was surprised, too, when I first found out that Python uses
> > indentation as part of syntax.  But I just adapted.  After all, Python
> > makes me do what I'd do anyway, I just leave the braces out.
> 
> I know... I don't really understand my reaction to this feature of the
> language. Even though I can come up with a list of reasons why it is
> wrong to use indentation as syntax, when I think about it rationally I
> don't understand why I feel that way.
> 
> I have implemented and even designed languages that were line oriented
> rather than stream oriented and I have written a lot of code in line
> oriented languages such as assembly and FORTRAN and BASIC... The way it
> is done in Python still bothers me. Well, what can I say, I downloaded
> the Python docs. May be I'll give it another try.
> 
>               Bob Pendleton
> 
> --
> +--------------------------------------+
> + Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer +
> + email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx             +
> + blog:  www.Stonewolf.net             +
> + web:   www.GameProgrammer.com        +
> +--------------------------------------+
> 
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+--------------------------------------+
+ Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer +
+ email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx             +
+ blog:  www.Stonewolf.net             +
+ web:   www.GameProgrammer.com        +
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