Games people play

[Kyle Furlong]

Walter Bright wrote:
> J Duncan wrote:
>> Excellent thread! Ive said before that D *SHOULD* be the future of 
>> game development, and for some smart people it will be. Ive worked on 
>> several commercial game projects and it occurs to me that a large bulk 
>> of our engines were basically macros, templates, and patterns to 
>> implement many of the idioms D currently contains (and sometimes 
>> java); basically, to transform C++ into a 'better' language.
> 
> In big projects I've done in C++, a large part of the effort was doing 
> infrastructure things, things that are built in to D. How many times 
> have I done and redone and redone string classes, file handling, 
> collections, symbol tables, etc.
> 
>> And we still use C++ almost exclusively for performance reasons. This 
>> is why D should fill this space quite well. I tend to have a more laid 
>> back approach to all of this however, I believe we have a lot of work 
>> to do regarding the language infrastructure, and once that is in place 
>> the popularity will take care of itself. Build it and they will come.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Also I noticed one of the things sweeny mentioned in the DNG was 
>> persistent objects.... something we may be heading towards with DDL. 
>> So the future is pretty bright and I feel that once we have some of 
>> these world class features like reflection etc, many people will take 
>> a serious look at D. And on that note ive noticed some people will 
>> probably *never* be convinced that a language is better for them than 
>> c++, this has something to do with human nature that I dont fully 
>> understand. This is a big reason I stopped worrying about D popularity.
> 
> A large fraction of current C++ developers will never leave C++, no 
> matter what. Just like there are still people who never moved past C. 
> They'll always search for, and will find, some niche reason why C++ is 
> better no matter what advantages D has. That's just a fact of human 
> nature, and shouldn't bother us.
> 
>> also as a big fan of QT, Id like to request a S&S mechanism; or some 
>> sort of messaging pattern in the language. I think this would take D 
>> "over the top!"
> 
> While I appreciate and enjoy the enthusiasm, this is deja vu all over 
> again. My entire career in compilers (C, C++, D, Javascript, etc.) I've 
> heard people say that "if only you implemented X, it will open the 
> floodgates!" It never does, but what does work is to work with people 
> who are *already* D users who are blocked by the lack of something. With 
> S&S, I'd like to see first how far it can be pushed with existing D 
> techniques.

This last paragraph is why D will succeed. Walter, if this isn't the 
best way to evolve a language, I don't know what is.

-- 
Kyle Furlong // Physics Undergrad, UCSB

"D is going wherever the D community wants it to go." - Walter Bright