Note: This post will be getting edited as I come across things to reply to.
John Galt
Mark Tiffany
If you want to see real progress, focus on the design and not the code. Scrap what you have now, call it trash, print out the source and burn it if you like, but stop going down the road the default IDE took. You're only heading to the waste-bin if you go there. Something you should do is take a look at good editors, like those mentioned above, and Blitz-specific editors and see what they have in common. Take Visual Blitz, Project Studio, Protean, and such and figure out what makes/made them great.
Winni
1] I'm sure he's said some nice things, being the guy who coined a term, but whether or not it's what he had in mind, C++ has turned into one of the most versatile and useful programming languages around. What he says does not in any way discredit C++ as a language, it only serves to show that ideas change in implementation and over time.
2] This is just plain wrong. OOP and speed are not tied together. It is just as possible to write slow code (note: slow code is not always bad code, as it may be slow but still as fast as you can get it) with object-oriented features as it is to do so without them. If you can prove otherwise, I would love to see it, but so far time and the collective experience of programmers everywhere has you wrong.
3] What is intuitive is completely subjective. What you find intuitive is never the same as someone else. What do you define as a serious look at a language? Also subjective. What is "complex and complicated" (same thing) and "simple and minimalist" to people is also subjective.
I think I managed to touch on everything I felt like replying to. I suppose if anyone in particular wants a response to something I could add that too.
John Galt
Que?
Apologies, John, that was just my way of breaking my post into my arguments against previous issues and such and then my issues. Counters is not a proposed issue. I'm not going to add the 'all data types aren't objects' because I think it would impact the speed of the code generated. I'm open to attempts to convince me otherwise.
I'm certain it would without a great deal of optimization. I just figure it would be nice to have everything as a object, since it isn't a significant issue, if one at all.Mark Tiffany
And the two reasons why it hasn't progressed much beyond the official IDE? Relatively few people have / want to contribute (but many thanks to those that have), and secondly that of motiviation: why try to improve if people prefer to use other IDEs, or (as was thought to be the case for the last year) mark's working on a swankier new one.
I'll tell you why I won't work on it: it's the same old IDE. I'm sure you think the code is neat and creative, but the result is the same piece of trash as before. You can come up with all the creative code you want and make the insides look pretty, but in the end you're doing nothing to make the program a more desirable alternative to, say, ConTEXT, Crimson, and other editors that provide the required functionality of a programmer's editor.If you want to see real progress, focus on the design and not the code. Scrap what you have now, call it trash, print out the source and burn it if you like, but stop going down the road the default IDE took. You're only heading to the waste-bin if you go there. Something you should do is take a look at good editors, like those mentioned above, and Blitz-specific editors and see what they have in common. Take Visual Blitz, Project Studio, Protean, and such and figure out what makes/made them great.
Winni
Funny. That is exactly how I feel about most C++ coders. Still, it is probably the weakest and most disqualifying argument you can give in a discussion.
Members of Gamedev.net as well. I was mostly just referring to the fact that you seem to imply that a Python user is a wholly different kind of programmer ("Pythonista"). We all write the same code, don't forget it- language almost never changes the way we write code, only how much code we write, which tends to depend on just how low/high-level the programming language is. If it's very low-level, you will not write different code, just more code to do the same thing at times. 1. What Alan Kay said.
2. OOP and speed in one sentence is a contradiction in itself.
3. When the overly complex and complicated language C++ is more intuitive to you than the simple and minimalist BlitzMax, then you cannot have seriously looked at BlitzMax in the first place.
2. OOP and speed in one sentence is a contradiction in itself.
3. When the overly complex and complicated language C++ is more intuitive to you than the simple and minimalist BlitzMax, then you cannot have seriously looked at BlitzMax in the first place.
1] I'm sure he's said some nice things, being the guy who coined a term, but whether or not it's what he had in mind, C++ has turned into one of the most versatile and useful programming languages around. What he says does not in any way discredit C++ as a language, it only serves to show that ideas change in implementation and over time.
2] This is just plain wrong. OOP and speed are not tied together. It is just as possible to write slow code (note: slow code is not always bad code, as it may be slow but still as fast as you can get it) with object-oriented features as it is to do so without them. If you can prove otherwise, I would love to see it, but so far time and the collective experience of programmers everywhere has you wrong.
3] What is intuitive is completely subjective. What you find intuitive is never the same as someone else. What do you define as a serious look at a language? Also subjective. What is "complex and complicated" (same thing) and "simple and minimalist" to people is also subjective.
I think I managed to touch on everything I felt like replying to. I suppose if anyone in particular wants a response to something I could add that too.