Re: Games in Java?

[Bert Peers <rat@larian.com>]

Erik wrote:

> yes, but the primary language used right now is C++ and that's moving to java.

I think this is probably why I couldn't follow your argument : I've
never seen it being C++ in the first place.  Maybe I'm too old and
things have changed since I left univ ;)  But "in my days" (like, 4
years ago ;) ) there was zero C++ involved, there was in fact only 1
university in the whole country that teached it.  That's mostly why
I was a bit skeptical about your claim, as 4 years ago C++ was clearly
already the dominating language, although it was completely being
ignored by all major univs over here.  In fact, teaching C++ or
other practical stuff like how to configure a network or program
an API like OpenGL was all considered Evil for being Too Practical
(as opposed to Nicely Theoretical).
  Ergo this :

> use of the grunt force. While the universities do expose students to other
> languages (scheme, lisp, pascal, prolog, ada, etc), I feel they also guide the
> industries 'choice' languages.

sounded like a seti message from space :) Maybe things have changed,
or there's too much difference around the world about what
a univ considers a good curriculum.

> it's a supply and demand type issue I think. The U's supply C++ programmers. If
> you want to staff a development team, you hire one or two expensive gurus and a
> handful of cheap kids out of college. You don't want to dump a lot of money
> re-training your cheap labor.

Yes, exactly.  Our U's supply guys who can compute the O-complexity
of an algorithm but can't write it down in C or C++.  I hear it's
changing though.

> java gets used right now where either there's a specific need for it's
> capabilities (like belting out a binary distributable that works on about any
> UNIX in a short amount of time) or where it's performance is "good enough"
> (like the software I'm developing at work). I'm not saying you should start
> writing all your games in anticipation that java will support it, that would be
> ludicrous.

Ok :)  I assumed for a minute that you meant that university supply
of programmers fluent in Java was the only factor for a language's
success in industrial use, hence my technical objections.  Sorry :)

Bert
-- 

-=<Short Controlled Bursts>=-

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: linuxgames-unsubscribe@sunsite.auc.dk
For additional commands, e-mail: linuxgames-help@sunsite.auc.dk