So you complain that there isn't a language reference, and the you bust out Player.CanInstall(), and Screen.Message(..). You are aware that those still wouldn't be documented, right?
And with comments like "... Lua does not have a built-in concept of classes ..." floating around in its wiki article, I won't be buying a dress quite yet.
New scripting language
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dvlenk6
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I hope it doesn't get changed.
I've already spent time learning the transcendence script; wouldn't want to have to try and learn a whole new scipt language just to modify a ship or something.
I believe that would put an abrupt end to any modding of the game on my part.
I've already spent time learning the transcendence script; wouldn't want to have to try and learn a whole new scipt language just to modify a ship or something.
I believe that would put an abrupt end to any modding of the game on my part.
Well said. If it 'aint broke, don't fix it. This may not be the BEST language, but it gets the job done.evilbob wrote:It doesn't need changing, I can't see a point.
I'd like to see more stuff added to transc, rather than wasting time changing stuff that works well enough as it is.
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george moromisato
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An interesting thread.
Programming in the Transcendence script is hard for three different reasons:
1. The Transcendence engine is itself complex. The engine is designed primarily for performance and only secondarily for programmability. Some of the complexity in the scripting language reflects the complexity of the engine. This complexity would not be reduced by a switch to a different interpreter.
2. Transcendence script is not well documented. Despite the efforts of the community to document it as much as possible, the number of functions and events in Transcendence seems to be increasing at a faster rate. Again, this shortcoming will not be addressed by a switch to a different interpreter.
3. Transcendence script is based on Lisp and is thus unfamiliar to people who are used to C, Javascript, etc. In my opinion, this is not a huge obstacle. Most of the programmers that I know can pick up the syntax for a new language almost overnight. What takes much longer is learning the specific classes and functions available in the framework (which goes back to problems #1 and #2).
Every programmer has a different idea of the best language. I'm not even going to try to claim that the current Transcendence script is the best language.
But I do believe that changing interpreters at this point is not worth the effort.
Programming in the Transcendence script is hard for three different reasons:
1. The Transcendence engine is itself complex. The engine is designed primarily for performance and only secondarily for programmability. Some of the complexity in the scripting language reflects the complexity of the engine. This complexity would not be reduced by a switch to a different interpreter.
2. Transcendence script is not well documented. Despite the efforts of the community to document it as much as possible, the number of functions and events in Transcendence seems to be increasing at a faster rate. Again, this shortcoming will not be addressed by a switch to a different interpreter.
3. Transcendence script is based on Lisp and is thus unfamiliar to people who are used to C, Javascript, etc. In my opinion, this is not a huge obstacle. Most of the programmers that I know can pick up the syntax for a new language almost overnight. What takes much longer is learning the specific classes and functions available in the framework (which goes back to problems #1 and #2).
Every programmer has a different idea of the best language. I'm not even going to try to claim that the current Transcendence script is the best language.
But I do believe that changing interpreters at this point is not worth the effort.
And hey, you can put "Lisp experience" on your resume! I've seen it mentioned in a few tech job listings (was recently deciding if I want to switch jobs) and you never know what will give your resume that extra boost to get an interview.
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george moromisato
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Joel Spolsky has an interesting article about Lisp:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html
His basic premise is that Lisp makes it easier to create different levels of abstraction. Moreover, people who have experience with Lisp are likely to come up with more interesting (and different) ways of solving a programming problem.
He believes that Google, for instance, came up with their famous map-reduce architecture only because they had experience with Lisp (even though they wrote the actual code in C).
Thus I'm not sure that Lisp experience by itself will get you a job--but Lisp allows you to *think* in a certain way that will help you no matter what programming language you use.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html
His basic premise is that Lisp makes it easier to create different levels of abstraction. Moreover, people who have experience with Lisp are likely to come up with more interesting (and different) ways of solving a programming problem.
He believes that Google, for instance, came up with their famous map-reduce architecture only because they had experience with Lisp (even though they wrote the actual code in C).
Thus I'm not sure that Lisp experience by itself will get you a job--but Lisp allows you to *think* in a certain way that will help you no matter what programming language you use.
In the context of the online job descriptions that I was looking at, Lisp was just loosely related to the actual work at hand, but something to potentially increase someone's qualification for that job. But yeah, they made us take a course that used Lisp to illustrate alternative methods of coding and looking at problems, and I was EE with a CE concentration and not CS. We had to make a little Zork-like world (complete with a little quest and a hunting Troll that would eat you if you lingered in a room with it for a couple of turns) as one of our assignments... it was actually pretty fun. And the language structure made the troll seem more troll-like, if that makes any sense.
Interesting article. It always seemed like a human-type intelligence would be easier to simulate using Lisp-type (although obviously optimized) code... I didn't really consider the ease of parallelization across server farms/networks before but that's another mark in its favor.
Interesting article. It always seemed like a human-type intelligence would be easier to simulate using Lisp-type (although obviously optimized) code... I didn't really consider the ease of parallelization across server farms/networks before but that's another mark in its favor.