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Lobster, a New Game Programming Language, Now Available As Open Source

Posted by Soulskill on from the hello-world dept.

Aardappel writes "Lobster is a new programming language targeting game programming specifically, building on top of OpenGL, SDL 2 and FreeType. The language looks superficially similar to Python, but is its own blend of fun features. It's open source (ZLIB license) and available on GitHub."

10 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. gag me with a shift button by decora · · Score: 5, Informative

    i := find([ 1, 2, 3 ]): _ > r

    yeah. no. thanks but no thanks.

    1. Re:gag me with a shift button by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Still looks like a step forward from Perl.

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

  2. Dynamically Typed? by Wattos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dynamically Typed with Optional Typing

    Thanks, but no thanks, I prefer to stay with statically types languages. I know that the "kewl" kids love dynamically types languages, but it becomes a horror for maintenance. Ill be sticking with UDK in the meantime

    1. Re:Dynamically Typed? by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It really depends what you are doing. For many projects, scripting with some OOP is good enough (all those web projects, RoR, etc.). Having short code in an expressive language leads to less bugs.

      Static typing is extremely useful because it catches all mistakes of a certain class. However, other mistakes you still have to unit test for. So if you are unit&integration testing well, the benefit of static typing is small, and you are capturing more mistakes than static typing would.

      For projects where you have contract-like, long-term stable interfaces/APIs, yes, use static typing. But don't pretend it's for every project.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
  3. "Fun features"? by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Languages don't have "fun" features, they either have useful features or bloat.

    Looks like yet another me-too language that's someones pet project that will be forgotten about this time tommorow.

  4. Re:Too soon by robthebloke · · Score: 4, Funny

    The kind that substitues a #define with a #endif....

  5. fuck me slashdot cant display unicode by decora · · Score: 4, Insightful

    oh well

  6. Re:Just what is needed! by RaceProUK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Another programming language! Why do people keep reinventing the spoon?

    Which spoon? The soup spoon? Teaspoon? Tablespoon? Dessert spoon? Wooden spoon?

    --
    No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
  7. Re:Just what is needed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    At least it's open source, you can always fork it.

  8. Re:why dont we just use chinese characters? by dintech · · Score: 4, Informative

    Been there, done that. Look specifically at APL in the 60s. Functions were represented by single characters which you needed a special keyboard to type. For example, instead of typing the string floor, instead it was represented by what is now Unicode Character 'LEFT FLOOR' (U+230A) and required a special terminal to reproduce them. This limited where you could input and also display APL code.

    One evolution of APL was the A+ language leading finally to K in the 90s. Having these special character requirements was too much of a pain in APL so all special characters were replaced by tuples of ASCII characters that were already common. In K, 'floor' was now expressed as _: which is no easier to guess the meaning of if you don't know the syntax, but now you need only standard ASCII to represent it.

    'Son of K' was Q which comes full circle replacing _: with the keyword floor. Iverson's argument in developing APL was that the terseness achieved by using notoation (single characters) meant that you could express concepts more conciesely. This in turn meant that complex concepts were easier to visualise. There's a lot to be said for this, but I think Q now provides a much happier medium between the two perspectives.