C++ sucks for games

[Neo-LISPer]

Two score and six years ago our fathers brought forth on this planet, a
new language, conceived with Lambda, and dedicated to the proposition that
all objects are created equal. Now Raghar wrote thusly:

What site? This thread started by some person that didn't posted
here second time.

Pearls before swines, aka USENET poster remorse syndrome.

This thread has just 668 posts and is growing...

Funny is he didn't say LISP is solution for all that problems,
however main debate was about LISP.

What part of "most of the good programmers graduated to languages like Lisp
or avoided C++ altogether" do you need help interpreting as an endorsement?

 

[Hartmann Schaffer]

What site?

there is a thread in c.l.l that has "Lisp sucks for game" in its title
(check google) whose 1st message points to that site

This thread started by some person that didn't posted
here second time.

this post was a parody to the arguments given on the website. perhaps
the choice of newsgroups was ill advised

This thread has just 668 posts and is growing...

actually, i found some of the subthreads quite interesting

hs

 

[Neo-LISPer]

this post was a parody to the arguments given on the website.

Right. However, that should not be taken to mean that anything I wrote was
inaccurate. I stand by everything I wrote to the letter [1].

The original "Lisp sucks" web site focused on the perceived problems of
Lisp, ignoring the fact that C++, the implied alternative, "sucks" far, far
more.

[1] Except the term "closures" should have been used instead of
"higher-order functions"

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Funny is he didn't say LISP is solution for all that problems,
however main debate was about LISP.

His name was enough to mark him as a Lisp crank.

- Gerry Quinn

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Right. However, that should not be taken to mean that anything I wrote was
inaccurate. I stand by everything I wrote to the letter

On this newsgroup we have no particular interest in the institutional
squabbles of language advocates, so your 'parody' was somewhat wasted.
[As for the website and its companion, they look somewhat more coherent
and reasonable than most of what has been posted here.]

The original "Lisp sucks" web site focused on the perceived problems of
Lisp, ignoring the fact that C++, the implied alternative, "sucks" far, far
more.

Then why do YOU think hardly anybody uses Lisp for games development?
What games have YOU developed in Lisp?

- Gerry Quinn

 

[John Thingstad]

Right. However, that should not be taken to mean that anything I wrote
was
inaccurate. I stand by everything I wrote to the letter

On this newsgroup we have no particular interest in the institutional
squabbles of language advocates, so your 'parody' was somewhat wasted.
[As for the website and its companion, they look somewhat more coherent
and reasonable than most of what has been posted here.]

The original "Lisp sucks" web site focused on the perceived problems of
Lisp, ignoring the fact that C++, the implied alternative, "sucks" far,
far
more.

Then why do YOU think hardly anybody uses Lisp for games development?
What games have YOU developed in Lisp?

- Gerry Quinn

Ehm.. Look at the number of cross postings.
comp.lang.lisp, which I am reading, does this sort of thing all the time.

 

[Peter Ashford]

Dude, I'm writing openGL / Java code - I *know* that you can write

Fine, fine, fine! Like any dinosaur, C++ has a lot of inertia, for all
the reasons you stated. Do you think COBOL/VSAM had no inertia? Staff
knowledge? Existing software?

But you said "...and probably never will". Bzzt!

I also said "game studios" and "tool chains"

Those were never programmed in COBOL, and studios with products that
cost as much as they currently do and employ as large teams as they
currently do have NEVER existed before in the history of computing, so
your analogy is not at all to the point. Your analogy works for
business computing, and in that context I'd agree, That wasn't what I
was talking about however.

My read on the situation is, inertia schmertia. These dynasties
disappear overnight.

No chance.


And the edge Lisp has over C++ is close to an order

of magnitude, so this will be an exceptionally quick transition.

Don't berate me, I like LISP.

This whole thread started when some Microsoft drone did his master's
bidding and trashed Lisp on his personal Web site. That just confirms
what any follower of comp.lang.lisp can tell you: the Ice Age is over.
The thaw has begun. A steady stream of newbies has the old-timers
scrambling to keep up with the newby FAQs (and we're so happy to see
them that we do not even mind that the Qs are FA).

And Micro$oft is scared, as they always are by anything they cannot
control.

My comments have nothing to do with the beast from Redmond.

As they say in your business, Game Over. I recommend AllegroCL on the
win32 platform, btw, if you want to start your re-training.

I don't need to retrain, I already know LISP, have done for years. And
I prefer CLISP thanks )

 

[Peter Ashford]

I'm not so sure it'd be that simple. It'd require major changes to the CLR
as I understand it - for better or worse, .NET assumes a Java-like OO
model. And I suspect MS's commitment to it's pretty hefty, it's their
ticket off x86 should they feel the need.

I hate .NET because I'm a Java fan and I think M$ are just trying to
crush something that's better than anything they could have thought of
themselves... but... .NET has been pretty successfull at getting
multiple languages to run in their runtime. There's already Lisp,
Haskell, Scheme, ML and many other languages running on the .NET platform.

..NET is evil and you should all shun M$, but I don't beleive that it has
the technical limitations you ascribe to it (I beleive those limitations
would be more likely applicable to the JVM which wasn't really designed
as a language neutral VM).

 

[Peter Ashford]

The original "Lisp sucks" web site focused on the perceived problems of

Then why do YOU think hardly anybody uses Lisp for games development?
What games have YOU developed in Lisp?

- Gerry Quinn

Personally I think my point about the tool chain and knowledge
investment in C++ is a large part of why *any* other language will have
a hard time changing the way things are.

 

[Edi Weitz]

.NET is evil and you should all shun M$, but I don't beleive that it
has the technical limitations you ascribe to it (I beleive those
limitations would be more likely applicable to the JVM which wasn't
really designed as a language neutral VM).

..NET makes a couple of assumptions that really don't fit Common
Lisp. Duane Rettig of Franz Inc. has posted a couple of interesting
articles about this topic some years ago. One of them is here:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl826061951d&dq=&hl=en&[email protected]>

Edi.

PS: Followup-To set.

 

[Christopher C. Stacy]

Those were never programmed in COBOL, and studios with products that
cost as much as they currently do and employ as large teams as they
currently do have NEVER existed before in the history of computing,

What is it about game studios that is fundamentally different
from any other software house? Certainly the size of their
teams and the cost of their investments is miniscule compared
to most other software development efforts which have changed
technologies over years.

 

[Philippa Cowderoy]

I hate .NET because I'm a Java fan and I think M$ are just trying to
crush something that's better than anything they could have thought of
themselves... but... .NET has been pretty successfull at getting
multiple languages to run in their runtime. There's already Lisp,
Haskell, Scheme, ML and many other languages running on the .NET platform.

AIUI these tend to have interoperability limitations, though I guess I
should play with GHC's Haskell-on-.NET support once 6.4's out.

 

[Kenny Tilton]

I also said "game studios" and "tool chains"

Those were never programmed in COBOL, and studios with products that
cost as much as they currently do and employ as large teams as they
currently do have NEVER existed before in the history of computing, so
your analogy is not at all to the point. Your analogy works for
business computing, and in that context I'd agree, That wasn't what I
was talking about however.
......



And the edge Lisp has over C++ is close to an order



Don't berate me, I like LISP.

"Berate: To rebuke or scold angrily and at length."

Hunh? Anyway, I hear you saying that it takes larger teams than we have
ever seen before to produce software costing more than we have ever seen
before in C++.

We almost agree. C++ is so counter-productive (even C++ gurus Eckel
and Martin agree dynamic languages make development much faster) that
they indeed make an existing tool chain and huge programming team
necessary to produce a new game. Lisp will liberate the studios from
their enslavement to that investment.

Language chauvinism? Everyone throws around Naughty Dog as an example of
Lisp and games, but one implication has been missed: serious game
developers did not just use Lisp, they undertook the cost of developing
a (subset) Lisp compiler (console assembler) so they could program
consoles in Lisp. Maybe they knew what they were doing:

http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/animation_graphics/naughtydog.lhtml

"Naughty Dog has been making computer and video games for over 15 years.
Company founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin started writing video games
as teenagers, and produced several titles for Electronic Arts while
still in College.

"Gavin learned Lisp in 1992 while working on his Ph.D. in Computer
Science at MIT. While there, he and Rubin developed a fighting game
entitled "Way of the Warrior." The high-quality graphics, sound and
artificial intelligence of the game attracted several publishing offers
– including one from Universal Interactive Studios (with whom they
signed a three-project deal in 1994)."

So they know their way around games. And were already writing games
before they knew Lisp. And they liked Lisp so much that they undertook
the cost of writing a Lisp compiler. How come?

"Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin, says the unique capabilities of Lisp
enabled fast development and execution of character and object control –
something that was needed to fully realize the numerous 3D creatures and
devices which interact with the player in real-time (60 frames per second).

"Lisp was just the best solution for this job," comments Gavin. "With
leading edge game systems like ours, you have to deal with complicated
behaviors and real-time action. Languages like C are very poor with
temporal constructs. C is just very awkward for a project like this.
Lisp, on the other hand, is ideal.

"As Gavin explains, "With Lisp, one can rapidly develop meta constructs
for behaviors and combine them in new ways. In addition, Lisp allows the
redefinition of the language to easily add new constructs; particularly
those needed to deal with time-based behaviors and layering of actions.
Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing inherently slow about Lisp.
It is easy to construct a simple dialect which is just as efficient as
C, but retains the dynamic and consistent qualities that make Lisp a
much more effective expression of one’s programming intentions."

I prefer CLISP thanks )

Killer FFI, I see. great for talking to an existing C tool chain.

kenny

 

[Peter Ashford]

"Berate: To rebuke or scold angrily and at length."

Don't be a pedant, I like LISP. )

<snip stuff about Naughty Dog>

You're preaching to the converted. I already like LISP, as noted before.

The fact that ND can do their own thing is cool, but most companies use
lots of tools (like middleware) that assume C++. If you can get lots of
middleware, tools and console compilers for LISP then you might make
some progress, but middleware providers have small niches that they live
in. They won't go out on a limb and produce a LISP version of a product
for a non-existent market and the market won't grow without the tools.
That's the inertia effect I refered to before.

Again, I dont doubt at all that LISP is suitable for games, I just think
that if you look realistically at the commercial pressures surrounding
games development houses and middleware producers, that a change to LISP
is hardly a likely thing.

 

[Peter Ashford]

What is it about game studios that is fundamentally different
from any other software house? Certainly the size of their
teams and the cost of their investments is miniscule compared
to most other software development efforts which have changed
technologies over years.

Tools and middleware providers have small niches that they live in.
There is a very small market of game developers in the world, so the
number of people who will buy a physics engine or a rendering engine is
very very small. Noone in that market can afford to produce a product
for a non-existent market and it's hard to start out with LISP because
the middleware tools don't exist. You can write everything yourself but
that's a serious impediment to writing a AAA game where most, if not
all, games use at least some middleware from someone else.

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Christopher C. Stacy wrote:

Tools and middleware providers have small niches that they live in.
There is a very small market of game developers in the world, so the
number of people who will buy a physics engine or a rendering engine is
very very small. Noone in that market can afford to produce a product
for a non-existent market and it's hard to start out with LISP because
the middleware tools don't exist. You can write everything yourself but
that's a serious impediment to writing a AAA game where most, if not
all, games use at least some middleware from someone else.

What puzzles me is, if Lisp is so good, where are the shareware and
freeware Lisp games?

There are plenty in C++, and C, and VB, and Delphi, and Flash, and Java.

We know it's perfectly do-able - people have implemented games in Lisp
on this thread. So what goes wrong, if the language is really so
powerful and productive?

It's like insisting that a chisel is better than an axe for cutting
trees, all the while shivering because your house has no firewood!
[Okay, we accept that the great hero Badcur once cut down a tree with a
chisel, nearly as fast as an average person might do with an axe.]

- Gerry Quinn

 

[jayessay]

....
[As for the website and its companion, they look somewhat more coherent
and reasonable than most of what has been posted here.]

This comment is a sad but telling commentary on most of what you've
written here.


/Jon

 

[Christopher C. Stacy]

What puzzles me is, if Lisp is so good, where are the shareware and
freeware Lisp games?

This is your own personal puzzle, of course.

 

[Gerry Quinn]

This is your own personal puzzle, of course.

If it doesn't puzzle you, how about explaining it to the rest of us?

- Gerry Quinn

 

[Christopher C. Stacy]

If it doesn't puzzle you, how about explaining it to the rest of us?

If you pay me.