[gameprogrammer] Re: Fast development over multiple platforms, which language?

  • From: Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Gameprogrammer Mailing List <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 11:22:19 -0600

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 14:01 +0000, Brian Barrett wrote:
> some people mensioned that you can compile java, which i suspected,
> and that you can use Open GL with it, which i didn't.
> 
> can you give some links for these?
> 
> also, i would always see java as interpreted; whats the difference
> between interpreting bytecode( effecively another architecture ) and
> interpreting BASIC style commands. its faster to interpret byte code
> but it is still iterpreted, yes? unless its compiled, which is
> confusing.

You know, I used to do BASIC programming on mainframes back before the
PC was possible. Every version of BASIC I used was compiled to native
machine code. I used both traditional compiler that treated BASIC just
like it was C/C++ and I used on the fly compilers. The on the fly
compilers were fun when you typed "run" the compiler would compile the
first line of the program and the jump to that code and run it. Then it
could compile the next line of code, and so on. It compiled code just
before it ran it. Of course, it didn't compile any code more than once.
The result was a system where programs started quickly and ran
efficiently. 

The first BASIC on the Apple II compiled to a virtual machine and ran on
that. MS 8K BASIC executed a tokenized form of the language. All the
BASIC programmers I knew at the time want to string up the folks and
Apple and MS for creating such slow version of BASIC. Now you can find
people who don't believe you can compile BASIC. They think there is
something intrinsic in the design that forces BASIC to be interpreted.

Heavy heavy sigh

> 
> personally i'd prefer if c/c++ was compiled into a bytecode and then
> recompiled into native code when you install the program. the problem
> is the lack of cross platform libraries like java, which are ( i think
> ), it's greatest strength.

Isn't that the definition of .NET? All the .NET language implementations
compile to a common virtual machine and then programs are either
recompiled or interpreted on the final runtime. Mono is a port of .NET
for UNIX/Linux systems.

                Bob Pendleton

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