Re: [dylan] The Future of Dylan: What do we use it for?

Andrew Glynn <[email protected]> Mon, 8 Sep 2014 12:03:05 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lang.dylan.gwydion.devel
Message-ID <CANmAu+aoJXPcE6SHdQsYc_fCNHz5rdC9jUXcRftT0siwGOfnQw@mail.gmail.com>
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A while ago I did a bit of work on a Dylan game engine, but I ended up
getting kind of bogged down in various details, many of which were
unrelated to Dylan. Although I might be getting ahead of things here, I'll
briefly mention a couple of issues that could make the Dylan side of game
development easier in the future.

First, Bruce (and others?) already put in a lot of work on improving
melange, and those improvements certainly made my life quite a bit easier.
But it's still not as painless as one might hope. Would the LLVM back-end
help for auto-generating FFI stuff? For example, integrating libclang
somehow? Being able to integrate with C++ (in addition to C) would be even
better, considering all the libraries it would make available, but I don't
know how complicated that would be.

Second: value types. I'm not trying to create fancy AAA blockbuster games,
but even for a little toy physics engine I've had to replace my <vec2>
class and its useful library of vector math functions with a bunch of raw
<single-float>s in order to get acceptable performance. To be fair, I
didn't profile to see why the class-based version was so much slower, but I
imagine having unboxed, stack allocated value types (and vectors of them
allocated contiguously) would be helpful.

-Andrew


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Bruce Mitchener <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Feel free to respond to the earlier thread if you haven't yet, but here's
> the next thread!
>
> What do we all use or want to use Dylan for?
>
> The idea here is to see what sort of thing we might focus on, based on how
> we intend to use Dylan. Also, perhaps enough of us are using it for similar
> things that we can get some sort of cooperation going.
>
> We recognize that Dylan is a general purpose language and don't plan to
> change that. But it might be well suited for certain types of applications,
> especially if we're able to improve the library coverage some!
>
> Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
>
>  - Bruce
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> hackers mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.opendylan.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers
>
>

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<div dir=3D"ltr">A while ago I did a bit of work on a Dylan game engine, bu=
t I ended up getting kind of bogged down in various details, many of which =
were unrelated to Dylan. Although I might be getting ahead of things here, =
I&#39;ll briefly mention a couple of issues that could make the Dylan side =
of game development easier in the future.<div><br></div><div>First, Bruce (=
and others?) already put in a lot of work on improving melange, and those i=
mprovements certainly made my life quite a bit easier. But it&#39;s still n=
ot as painless as one might hope. Would the LLVM back-end help for auto-gen=
erating FFI stuff? For example, integrating libclang somehow? Being able to=
 integrate with C++ (in addition to C) would be even better, considering al=
l the libraries it would make available, but I don&#39;t know how complicat=
ed that would be.</div><div><br></div><div>Second: value types. I&#39;m not=
 trying to create fancy AAA blockbuster games, but even for a little toy ph=
ysics engine I&#39;ve had to replace my &lt;vec2&gt; class and its useful l=
ibrary of vector math functions with a bunch of raw &lt;single-float&gt;s i=
n order to get acceptable performance. To be fair, I didn&#39;t profile to =
see why the class-based version was so much slower, but I imagine having un=
boxed, stack allocated value types (and vectors of them allocated contiguou=
sly) would be helpful.</div><div><br></div><div>-Andrew<br></div><div><br><=
/div></div><div class=3D"gmail_extra"><br><div class=3D"gmail_quote">On Wed=
, Sep 3, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Bruce Mitchener <span dir=3D"ltr">&lt;<a href=3D"=
mailto:[email protected]" target=3D"_blank">[email protected]=
om</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"marg=
in:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir=3D"ltr"=
>Feel free to respond to the earlier thread if you haven&#39;t yet, but her=
e&#39;s the next thread!<div><br></div><div>What do we all use or want to u=
se Dylan for?</div><div><br></div><div>The idea here is to see what sort of=
 thing we might focus on, based on how we intend to use Dylan. Also, perhap=
s enough of us are using it for similar things that we can get some sort of=
 cooperation going.</div>
<div><br></div><div>We recognize that Dylan is a general purpose language a=
nd don&#39;t plan to change that. But it might be well suited for certain t=
ypes of applications, especially if we&#39;re able to improve the library c=
overage some!</div>
<div><br></div><div>Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!</div><span cl=
ass=3D"HOEnZb"><font color=3D"#888888"><div><br></div><div>=C2=A0- Bruce</d=
iv><div><br></div></font></span></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
hackers mailing list<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]<=
/a><br>
<a href=3D"https://lists.opendylan.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers" target=3D"=
_blank">https://lists.opendylan.org/mailman/listinfo/hackers</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>

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_______________________________________________
hackers mailing list
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