BrEgOrS,
It would be more efficient if line 30 read:
Gabriel,
The key question to ask yourself is: what would moving to .net actually get you?
.net offers a fantastic framework to rapidly build applications. But future proof? What does .net offer now that you could conceivably need in a few years? COM?
I've invested a fair amount of time writing a multimedia editor / player in C#... and dropped it and went to BlitzMax. The BlitzMax version was smaller, faster, and didn't need the .net framework installed, and thus could run directly from a CD. Everything I could do using the .net stuff was available (in one way or another) from within BlitzMax.
Just because Microsoft wills it doesn't mean .net will be a huge success. The Vista team tossed out all the managed stuff because the performance wasn't there. .net is up to 3.0 now, and it's still huge and slow. You don't want to be the first .net application running on a particular framework if you want it to load fast!
If you're seriously thinking about game programming in a .net language, be very aware how the memory management works. Tom Miller (managed DirectX design team leader) has written a few books about this, and it seems you have the choice of writing code that is easy to maintain or code that runs quickly. A core problem is the way structures are passed around: from what I've read, structures are passed as entire copies (unless you declare vast sections as unsafe, then you get to use pointers), and the memory thrashing is huge. My multimedia program was a memory nightmare, tossing around 100meg/second or thereabouts, before actual graphics were done. TomMiller got around that, but the code was some of the nastiest hacking you'll ever see in a managed enviroment. Basically, you unamage wahever you can, make the rest unsafe, and use pointers. Why not write the damn thing in C if you need to address pointers like that?
Anyway, my A$0.02
10 M$ = "Money"
20 PRINT M$;" ";
30 GOTO 10
20 PRINT M$;" ";
30 GOTO 10
It would be more efficient if line 30 read:
30 GOTO 20
as the variable assignment has already happened. Warren, you beat me to it!Gabriel,
The key question to ask yourself is: what would moving to .net actually get you?
.net offers a fantastic framework to rapidly build applications. But future proof? What does .net offer now that you could conceivably need in a few years? COM?
I've invested a fair amount of time writing a multimedia editor / player in C#... and dropped it and went to BlitzMax. The BlitzMax version was smaller, faster, and didn't need the .net framework installed, and thus could run directly from a CD. Everything I could do using the .net stuff was available (in one way or another) from within BlitzMax.
Just because Microsoft wills it doesn't mean .net will be a huge success. The Vista team tossed out all the managed stuff because the performance wasn't there. .net is up to 3.0 now, and it's still huge and slow. You don't want to be the first .net application running on a particular framework if you want it to load fast!
If you're seriously thinking about game programming in a .net language, be very aware how the memory management works. Tom Miller (managed DirectX design team leader) has written a few books about this, and it seems you have the choice of writing code that is easy to maintain or code that runs quickly. A core problem is the way structures are passed around: from what I've read, structures are passed as entire copies (unless you declare vast sections as unsafe, then you get to use pointers), and the memory thrashing is huge. My multimedia program was a memory nightmare, tossing around 100meg/second or thereabouts, before actual graphics were done. TomMiller got around that, but the code was some of the nastiest hacking you'll ever see in a managed enviroment. Basically, you unamage wahever you can, make the rest unsafe, and use pointers. Why not write the damn thing in C if you need to address pointers like that?
Anyway, my A$0.02