Re: Scripting

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Chris wrote:

>Jan Ekholm wrote:

>To start with, anything involving remotely "unsafe"* memory tricks or type 
>fiddling - complicated pointer work, interleaving types in memory blocks, 
>custom memory handling, that sort of thing: situations where the type 
>checking and controls an interpreted language imposes prevent the "simpler" 
>or more powerful solution from being usable and require additional code to
>solve the problem in a different way (which gets you both ways - you end up
>doing more work in a language that is slower, so your program is slower and
>bigger than it need be..)

You don't need to do "unsafe memory tricks or complicated pointer work" in
scripted language...

>> So they are on this list? So what? So they are Tetris clones? So what? The
>> issue is IMHO not about that Linux game developers do simple games, but
>> what language they should be given for their Tetris clone. Recommending
>> the new developers to automatically go with C++ is just a little bit
>> silly.
>
>Why? In work I'm teaching bioinformatics students C and Java so they can 
>write sequencing programs, database frontends and the other weird and
>fiddly tools they need. They start with simple problems and work through 
>progressively harder ones - why is it so bad to start making small games
>in c++ and then go on to bigger ones?

My main issue here would be the fact that some developers seem to directly
skip over scripting languages as options. Granted, you've all managed to
convince me of the necessity for a compiled language for more complex 3D
games, but I don't understand what's so wrong with writing simpler games
in, say, Python? Why can't a simpler language that lets you more easily
focus on the actual game be recommended to many/most developers? I
understand that many don't like those languages, that's the way it is, but
I don't udnerstand this fanaticism. It's a bit like "real business
applications are written in Cobol on a mainframe".

Ok, I'll stop whining now and focus on some day try to start writing a
game that will never be completed. :) I'm sorry for bothering all the
advanced game developers here with my opinions.

-- 
  The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.
                                        -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods