Re: F# fsharp

 >> Long story short: You are welcome *discussing* F#, why it is cool, 
how to
 >> use it in projects, possibly give some actual examples of where F# 
would
 >> shine, but all that with a moderate and open tone.
 >
 > Did all of that.  Did you notice?  Do you care?

I re-read all the messages, you did not give actual examples of what F# 
would bring in the specific case of game scripting (I guess I should 
have been more accurate on what I asked).

You only evangelized bullet points in the wikipedia style:
- performance relative to other potential scripting language
- generic statements about why F# can do everything that C# can do, plus 
more
- then you asked if people wanted to give a try/learn more


 > Hey I skimmed it.  And it doesn't answer various questions about
 > interpreted development anyways.  It indicates that the questions
 > *may* be answered *somewhere else*.  I dismissed nothing.  I think you
 > guys are jumping all over some aspect of C# and Mono because it's more
 > familiar to you than F#.

I don't even do .net at all.
I'm one of these persons who never found the time/will to learn C#, or 
Python, heck I don't even write perl, and I can't even write bash 
scripts. Talk to be in Gfa Basic, 6502, 680x0, Mips, C or C++, I'm your 
man, for the rest I fear I'm out of date. So no, you assumed something 
incorrectly.


 >> So, typically, what would be the competitive edge of F# compared to 
more
 >> traditional scripting languages? Do you have some examples to provide?
 >
 > I'll make you a deal.  If you'll go back and reply to various points I
 > already raised in this thread, seeing as how I've already framed some
 > examples of this, I'll add my $0.02 as best I can.  Otherwise, I'm
 > done here.  My original question was, "Is anyone [around here]
 > currently considering [F#], or acting upon [it]?"  My answer is, no,
 > not really.  Time to find some other crowd to go talk F# to.

Ok, let's imagine I asked "Is anyone [around here] currently considering 
[something I don't know about but seems worth getting information 
about], or acting upton [that same thing]", and then did not gave any 
actual useful information about the thing, why would I expect people to 
answer anything: I did not provided the necessary information.

The problem as I see it is not what F# can or cannot do (a drill can do 
holes, a screwdriver can be used to put screws in the holes, a hammer 
could have been used to put a nail instead), the problem is to explain 
for people who never consider F# before (because it's very recent) why 
F# would be a new interesting tool to solve their particular problem.

I would argue that given enough sticky tape you could do in C++ anything 
you can do in F#, and more. The result would not be very pretty, but it 
would work. That does not mean it would be the way to go.

If F# is awesome, I expect a scripted character behavior, AI/FSM, 
dialogue engine, etc... to be easier to understand, more expressive, 
easier to debug, than the equivalently coded C#, Lua or even C++ (based 
on what you wrote), but what I want is an example of how it would look.

I googled for F#/games, and found a number of links:
- http://sharp-gamedev.blogspot.com/ (F# for game development)
- 
http://blogs.technet.com/b/apg/archive/2007/10/25/composing-a-video-game-in-f.aspx 
(A F# light cycle game)
- 
http://grammerjack.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F2629C772A178A7C!156.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=333136910 
(How to Write XNA Game Studio Express Games with F#)

I think I understand (roughly) what the code does, but so far I've not 
seen very simple code that a non experienced programmer would feel 
comfortable with. It looks very compact, but not super easy to read, imo.

I'm pretty sure that most of the guys who made the game scripts in 
Little Big Adventure would not have been able to use this language.

   Mickaël Pointier



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