...it was written twice. Chad Fowler wrote it the first time while he was on vacation in Europe. Then he had to rewrite it after his Powerbook was stolen on his trip home. Argh!
Sure, yup, production commercial games are written in C++, I agree.
I guess I found it surprising because I thought the emphasis would be more on the AI side of things, not the performance side. I thought that one of those more dynamic languages would lend itself more easily to that sort of thing... so programmers could concentrate more on, say, squad tactics, and less on pointer twiddling.
But Nicko's explanation (see his reply to my earlier post) makes sense - they've been running the contest on C++ since 1995, so it makes sense to carry on with it.
I'm surprised that they're not using Ruby, Java, or Python for this... seems like those languages might lend themselves a bit more easily to something like this.
In fact, the first thing I thought about when I saw this was IBM's Robocode framework - which is in Java.
"Hackers are having a real hard time finding work in the U.S.," says Kittridge in explaining his decision to work for spammers. "Spamming is our last resort to pay rent," he says.
Yup, I'm sure all those folks out there hanging drywall and cutting lawns feel really sorry for him. It's so sad when a computer programmer can't find a job that lets him express his hacking muse.
...are nifty. They can catch all sorts of stuff and produce lovely reports - or, well, at least functional reports. And running them nightly - or hourly - helps to ensure the code won't get out of sorts.
....Ruby Central is a worthy recipient of your tax-deductible donation. They arrange and sponsor Ruby conferences and generally support the Ruby community in a variety of ways. There's a Paypal donation link on the front page of RubyForge.
Props to David Allen Black and Chad Fowler who are the prime movers behind RubyCentral!
> trying to automagically use low-level languages > as if they were high is doomed to a > painful failure:)
Hm. Mostly, I agree - although I think scripting languages are frequently used in places where a memory leak or two isn't that important. For example, a cron job that creates some graphs can leak a few bytes without hurting anything.
> the programmer is freed from dealing with > the pesky details of using a low-level language.
I think the programmer is freed from fiddling with pointers and mallocs and so forth to some extent. Not completely, but that's the nature of abstraction layers. One could make the same argument regarding C and assembly language...
> Here development speed is more important > than execution speed. Python and kin
Right on. And with Ruby/Python/etc you can always dip down into a C library for bits that turn out to be performance-critical. With Ruby, this is usually as simple as something like:
require 'dl/import'
module Curl
extend DL::Importable
dlload "/usr/local/lib/libcurl.so"
extern "char *curl_version()"
end
Slashdot Mirror
Curses... thanks. Would that there was a post editing capability... ah well. Retry:
Thanks to Ruby Central for sponsoring RubyConf 2004!
> backing it up to a USB drive
> that also got stolen
argh ** 2
...are also available on ruby-doc.org here.
> Ruby is a better fit for this problem?
There's a good C2 Wiki page on this - PythonVsRuby.
...thanks to Ruby Central for sponsoring it.
A BitTorrent of the presentations is available here.
...it was written twice. Chad Fowler wrote it the first time while he was on vacation in Europe. Then he had to rewrite it after his Powerbook was stolen on his trip home. Argh!
More on Ruby Gems here.
...about patterns and architecture and such - On the Nature of 'The Nature of Order'.
It's a fairly short paper and can give you an idea of his style - or at least his style as it was 7 years ago.
> Most games *are* written in C++
Sure, yup, production commercial games are written in C++, I agree.
I guess I found it surprising because I thought the emphasis would be more on the AI side of things, not the performance side. I thought that one of those more dynamic languages would lend itself more easily to that sort of thing... so programmers could concentrate more on, say, squad tactics, and less on pointer twiddling.
But Nicko's explanation (see his reply to my earlier post) makes sense - they've been running the contest on C++ since 1995, so it makes sense to carry on with it.
> in 1995 when Mechmania started
Ah, OK, that makes sense.
> usually calls to any external
> libraries are allowed
Cool, thanks for the info!
I'm surprised that they're not using Ruby, Java, or Python for this... seems like those languages might lend themselves a bit more easily to something like this.
In fact, the first thing I thought about when I saw this was IBM's Robocode framework - which is in Java.
...that would compile Ruby programs into intermediate compiler code so they could be run on Parrot.
He's done a few releases and appears to be making good progress here.
> low-level things or speed.
I feel the same way about Ruby. It's just not worth the hassle of plowing thru 20 lines of try catch blocks in Java when I can do something likewith Ruby. Good times!
> do you know of one for Visual Basic?
Sorry, nope, don't know of one. Does Visual Studio include some stuff along those lines? I'm not sure...
...are nifty. They can catch all sorts of stuff and produce lovely reports - or, well, at least functional reports. And running them nightly - or hourly - helps to ensure the code won't get out of sorts.
PLUG: Need to check Java code? Try PMD!
> Umm, WTF does this language-specific
> organization have to do with ANYTHING?
They support open source - which is the topic of this discussion.
....Ruby Central is a worthy recipient of your tax-deductible donation. They arrange and sponsor Ruby conferences and generally support the Ruby community in a variety of ways. There's a Paypal donation link on the front page of RubyForge.
Props to David Allen Black and Chad Fowler who are the prime movers behind RubyCentral!
And the corporate web site is up to date!
I've used it to replace some Netscape stuff - it was part of a big Weblogic->Oracle->Solaris EJB app.
OpenLDAP seemed to work fine, although maybe it was because we weren't really loading it up too much...
> trying to automagically use low-level languages :)
> as if they were high is doomed to a
> painful failure
Hm. Mostly, I agree - although I think scripting languages are frequently used in places where a memory leak or two isn't that important. For example, a cron job that creates some graphs can leak a few bytes without hurting anything.
> the programmer is freed from dealing with
> the pesky details of using a low-level language.
I think the programmer is freed from fiddling with pointers and mallocs and so forth to some extent. Not completely, but that's the nature of abstraction layers. One could make the same argument regarding C and assembly language...
> libcurl might be in /usr/lib, or /opt/lib, or /home/foo/lib)
>
Sure! Ruby can also load a library off the PATH, too.
> This is what we mean by "scripting
> languages don't scale".
Hm. How is loading a shared object library involved in "scaling"?
> than execution speed. Python and kin
Right on. And with Ruby/Python/etc you can always dip down into a C library for bits that turn out to be performance-critical. With Ruby, this is usually as simple as something like:Hard to beat...
...on the latest code from CVS is right here.
Looks like DataDictionaryImpl.java could use some trimming...
> is it [Ruby] ok as a beginner langage ?
Yup, it's perfect. And actually, Alexey just started a forum for Ruby beginners. Might be a good place to ask questions...
Yup, there's a "tech preview" release of Rubydium right here.