Programming Languages

[KingAl]

Yeah, there's a real 'tipping' culture in America. Out of interest, what language do you most prefer?

[xander]

There is no FORTRAN option, and CowboyNeal is sadly missing. :'(

xander

[The GoldFish]

My favoured programming language is Assembly. But not for coding on PCs so much... PCs have too many layers of bullshit going on with their OS for my liking!

Most recently I've messed with LSL, the SL scripting language which is exceptionally slow, dated and has very limited memory and data structure support, as well as dabbling in Lua though so far I've had little real experience with it (sadly, mostly meddling with WoW interface addons). The only thing of any scale is some ground work for Antithesis (a game I may or may not ever make, sequal to BGE) which I did in an offshoot of basic. Because of that, at the moment my mind thinks of programming only in basic, which is wierd after being with C and similars for so long - I did a bit of C at university, mostly data structure orientated stuff rather than anything extreme / helpful, and LSL is relatively C like, as is Lua (at least in my mind). Hopefully I'm going to overhaul Antithesis' procesing structure and main service routines, while simultaneously migrating to C++ and doing some proper rendering (although it is all 2D). Depending on the libs and whathaveyou I get to use will depend on if this ever happens, since I'm used to some fairly lovey dovey functions with the offshoot it was originally made in.

[byrneda]

Lessee - in college I tried my hand at Modula 2, C, Assembler (Motorola 68000), COBOL but none really stuck, as much as my next love which I've been using for the last 7 years:
DOS Batch Files


I love scripting languages, as I can never get my head around all the data objects that have to be initliased at the beginning (but that might be changing).

To this end, I've written a little batch file which you can call whatever you want (but it's only been tested, and written on, Windows)

Code: Select all

@echo off
setlocal
cls

title Who are you?
echo Please Enter Your Name:
set /p NAME=

title The world says HI to you, %NAME%
echo.
echo Hello %NAME%, what do you think of Subversion?
echo.

for /l %%I IN (10,-1,1) do (
  call :UPDATE %%I
)
title See you later :o)
goto :END

:UPDATE
title %1...
ping -n 2 127.0.0.1 > nul
goto :EOF

:END
endlocal
pause


Can anyone point me in a nice direction to learn about scripting game engines? I've tried the Unreal Game Engine and its unreal script, and to be honest, it scared me away!
I learn by example (easiest and best way, actually - nothing like a good bug hunt) and would love to find a game which can be easily accessible for scripting with either Lua or Ruby (that sample script posted by Chris http://www.amk.ca/python/simple/letters.html is another no-no for me).

Next on the list is to harness in the likes of the WMI script.

[xander]

I find that interesting, as I can understand much of the code (sort of) even though it's my first time seeing a Python script. Perhaps it's because the syntax bears much resemblance with PHP. Did you also notice that the URL denotes it's simplicit

A language is a language is a language. They all have loops, and variables, and such (well, most of them). If you are familiar with one scripting language, any other scripting language should be intelligible, unless intentionally written otherwise (I'm looking at you, perl). Also, if you know a scripting language, a compiled language like C++ or FORTRAN shouldn't be terribly difficult to interpret, either.

At the end of the day, all programming languages are doing about the same thing, and the differences are in the style, or specific syntax.

xander

[Stewsburntmonkey]

I find that interesting, as I can understand much of the code (sort of) even though it's my first time seeing a Python script. Perhaps it's because the syntax bears much resemblance with PHP. Did you also notice that the URL denotes it's simplicit

A language is a language is a language. They all have loops, and variables, and such (well, most of them). If you are familiar with one scripting language, any other scripting language should be intelligible, unless intentionally written otherwise (I'm looking at you, perl). Also, if you know a scripting language, a compiled language like C++ or FORTRAN shouldn't be terribly difficult to interpret, either.

At the end of the day, all programming languages are doing about the same thing, and the differences are in the style, or specific syntax.

xander

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Well, when I look at the Lua example Chris picked (http://lua-users.org/wiki/SciteCleanDocWhitespace) I get an immediate dislike of Lua. For the simple reason that the syntax is unreadable to me when clauses aren't included in {wiggly brackets} or even (normal brackets) but in opening statements and 'end' statements. If only for that, I'd never pick that language. So this small difference in syntax makes the languages stand apart completely to me.

Jelco

I'm the same way. Curly bracketed clauses are just so much easier for me to read.

[byrneda]

Well, when I look at the Lua example Chris picked (http://lua-users.org/wiki/SciteCleanDocWhitespace) I get an immediate dislike of Lua.

Funny thing that - I look at the Lua code and I like its format.
I reckon the opening and end statements make it for me, as its so very close to batch scripting (although the end in my scripts usually are a "goto", which, in itself, can get very confusing if the functions aren't managed properly.

Although, it does seem to have some likeness to SED http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html in that its way of performing a Regular Expression seems rather natural to me.

This is cool - always nice to find out why people like one scripting language over another.

Anyone tried Ruby?

[xander]

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

Indeed. I should have included that caveat.

xander

[martin]

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

Indeed. I should have included that caveat.

xander

I was having a discussion similar to this with my dad yesterday on the way back from an applicants day at Birmingham university (for computer science applicants). I was moaning that Bham only teaches one language, java, and I'd have thought it would be better to teach several; but he pointed out that when you learn a new language you really learn the concepts the language is built on. Hence why it's so easy to understand that python script for a lot of people with some programming experience but no python experience to understand that script - it uses concepts a lot of other languages use and nothing particularly python specific.

[Pox]

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

Indeed. I should have included that caveat.

xander

I was having a discussion similar to this with my dad yesterday on the way back from an applicants day at Birmingham university (for computer science applicants). I was moaning that Bham only teaches one language, java, and I'd have thought it would be better to teach several; but he pointed out that when you learn a new language you really learn the concepts the language is built on. Hence why it's so easy to understand that python script for a lot of people with some programming experience but no python experience to understand that script - it uses concepts a lot of other languages use and nothing particularly python specific.

Yeah, apart from the syntax.

Rawr, I'm a python-stomping troll.

[martin]

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

Indeed. I should have included that caveat.

xander

I was having a discussion similar to this with my dad yesterday on the way back from an applicants day at Birmingham university (for computer science applicants). I was moaning that Bham only teaches one language, java, and I'd have thought it would be better to teach several; but he pointed out that when you learn a new language you really learn the concepts the language is built on. Hence why it's so easy to understand that python script for a lot of people with some programming experience but no python experience to understand that script - it uses concepts a lot of other languages use and nothing particularly python specific.

Yeah, apart from the syntax.

Rawr, I'm a python-stomping troll.

yes but the syntax is usually pretty simple to pick up, from looking at example scripts and then constantly attempting to run it and discover the bugs that are automatically picked out

[Pox]

That is unless you switch from procedural languages to a functional language like LISP which a completely different animal.

Indeed. I should have included that caveat.

xander

I was having a discussion similar to this with my dad yesterday on the way back from an applicants day at Birmingham university (for computer science applicants). I was moaning that Bham only teaches one language, java, and I'd have thought it would be better to teach several; but he pointed out that when you learn a new language you really learn the concepts the language is built on. Hence why it's so easy to understand that python script for a lot of people with some programming experience but no python experience to understand that script - it uses concepts a lot of other languages use and nothing particularly python specific.

Yeah, apart from the syntax.

Rawr, I'm a python-stomping troll.

Bah, the syntax has no advantage in my opinion, I would probably use python for the do-it-right model if not for the syntax... Nearly all widely-used languages in the last 20 years have been based on curlys and semicolons, they were mad to change it.

yes but the syntax is usually pretty simple to pick up, from looking at example scripts and then constantly attempting to run it and discover the bugs that are automatically picked out