Re: [Algorithms] Complexity of new hardware

[Rachel B. <r....@gm...>]

> It seems to me that you are only referring to the advantages of Type
> Inference in haskell,

Actually, I'm referring to type annotations in Haskell. While they are  
not necessary (the inference works quite well), they allow to generate  
better  (i.e. faster/shorter) code. I'm looking to extend that into a  
more generic system where you slowly annotate your code as you learn  
more about the problem at hand.

"Calcify" because your code becomes harder and harder to change - the  
price of specializing it for the task at hand.

Since I'm at the hand-waving stage with my thoughts on this, that's  
about as much explanation I can give - it sounded better in my mind ;)
>
> As I mentioned, C++ was not designed for making games, it's very
> suitable systems language, and for many systems in game development, I
> do find it enjoyable,

I'm curious - what do you feel C++ gives you (on a systems level)  
that's not achievable with C and a decent set of libraries?

>> At least for private projects, I've almost completely abandoned it  
>> - work
>> has a slightly higher inertia ;)
>
> I don't know if you're private projects are game related.

Some are, some are not. None of them seem to call for C++. Systems  
level work is done in C. If I need to step onto an OO level while  
doing systems work, ObjC seems a better choice to me, and pretty much  
*all* prototyping is done in Python or other HLLs.

If I'm trying out performance intensive stuff, I'm more than happy to  
throw rather large amounts of computational power at it if it gains me  
fast development. EC2 is your friend ;)


> But at the
> moment there seems to be a much bigger issue then inertia in the work
> environment, which is the lack of a viable alternative in our field.

That's entirely due to inertia and unwillingness to explore  
alternatives. If we spent less time on reinventing existing wheels,  
I'm confident we could do a lot of useful work in terms of generating  
alternatives.

(Side note: I'd *really* love to focus the "game development  
universities" on that. I'd think students would benefit from doing  
actual research, as opposed to vocational training...)

> Nicholas "Indy" Ray

I'm surprised that you as an Indy guy (or so I guess from the  
signature ;) feel there are no alternatives. XNA/C# seems a viable  
one? (Note - this is said as a bystander. I haven't used it yet.  
There's only so many hours in a day :( )

Rachel