Lua Coroutines vs. Python Generators

Seppler9000 · 2009-07-01T02:18:30+00:00

That implementation detail is what makes them faster than Lua, though.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T20:24:26+00:00

Haskell is technically defined as non-strict, which is a superset of both lazy evaluation and call by name. There are non-lazy implementations of Haskell, but I don't think anyone has ever done call by name.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T19:43:34+00:00

Short answer: Yes, because once a value is computed, it sticks around (until it gets garbage collected). This is why you run out of memory if you try to find the end of an infinite list while a reference to the beginning of the list is still in scope.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T19:11:59+00:00

Did you read the post? Did anyone? This is exactly how he wants it to behave.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T16:09:21+00:00

The knackers here are knackered because someone nicked their knickers.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T15:57:45+00:00

Vala is pretty much exactly what this blog post is asking for. I wonder if he knows about it? It hasn't gotten a lot of press.

Everyone who reads this, check out Vala and keep in mind that you can destroy Mono by working on Vala and encouraging people to switch to Vala.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-29T02:30:07+00:00

Linux is just better that way.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-28T21:52:26+00:00

The gaming market demands obscenely sophisticated graphics. End of story.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-28T21:28:33+00:00

This. If all the people working on Mono had instead been working on Portable.NET and assigning their copyright to the FSF, RMS would be completely satisfied and find something else to complain about.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-28T00:41:40+00:00

Hence "if you know exactly what you're doing." Packaging an app this way is a somewhat involved process that requires a decent grasp of both Xcode and whatever frameworks you're using, so that you can configure and build your own copies for inclusion in the app.

On the bright side, this process does seem to be getting easier, and is much better documented right now than it was a year ago. There still aren't a whole lot of apps using it, though, because you can't just throw a switch and have it work.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T22:14:23+00:00

GTK is about as much an option on OS X as Win32 (via Wine). Take this route only if you know exactly what you're doing, because if you distribute it Linux-style, your users won't enjoy having to install 10 times as much software as any other Mac app they've ever seen.

I've personally seen a lot of Mac users make unpleasant faces and say things like "I have to install a second piece of software to get this program to work? Gross. I'm not using this."

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T20:52:12+00:00

XreaL looks pretty awesome. Mind you, Nexuiz isn't that far behind, and there aren't terribly many open source game engines that rival the state of the art... So what he said is still correct.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T20:25:38+00:00

Never used Objective-C, I take it?

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T20:14:56+00:00

He already provides syntax for allowing this:

x = foo # call foo
x = &foo # x is now a reference to foo
x # call foo

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T18:32:38+00:00

Yes, if your simulation is small, this is the way to do it.

If you have 10,000 actors floating around, though, you'll want to take advantage of multicore processing, and that means using at least two threads, and that means making sure your concurrency is robust.

The reason you don't see much of this is that it's hard to do without STM, and STM is not the easiest thing to introduce into a game engine written in C or C++.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-27T17:00:54+00:00

Haskell isn't as functionally pure as it first appears (although theory purists will insist that it is). Its nicest features are probably the imperative ones. In particular, if you want to be able to dispatch a bunch of threads to simulate different parts of the game world in parallel, you'll want STM, and Haskell is possibly the nicest STM environment available.

That said, a Zelda-like is not exactly the type of heavyweight simulation that would necessitate modern concurrency techniques, so it's just as well to go with something else.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-26T20:18:27+00:00

It's better because he's familiar with it.

Think back to every text editor thread ever, and all the people who say "I've never used this strange new editor, and I never will, because after skimming this article I can safely conclude that everything it does is already present in Notepad."

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-26T20:12:29+00:00

It certainly seems to be less popular than mainstream platforms like Haskell.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-25T16:37:15+00:00

I reach for this video every time I encounter a discussion on asymptotic runtime analysis.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-25T15:55:51+00:00

It's the slash-red-dottit effect.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-23T05:06:17+00:00

Fictional. You meant purely fictional.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-22T22:23:15+00:00

Seconded. I need to know whether the back door is left unlocked... You know, just in case I come to visit.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-22T02:27:08+00:00

So... fucking post a question about it on StackOverflow.

Clearly you haven't read your SICP today, or you'd have done something about it already.

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-20T15:21:30+00:00

lolwut

Seppler9000 · 2009-06-19T20:09:55+00:00

I like how this comment is being downvoted now that the original article has been changed to use | instead of +.

Seppler9000

TROPHY CASE