05 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I think the enduring popularity in the mudding community is the unduly representation in the codebases

Yes, I think this is a very hard statement to disagree with. People use what is in front of them. Same goes for snippets, which are one reason why a "technically superior" codebase can still fail to gain traction because people can't figure out how to apply their favorite snippets to it.
Runter said:
and the friendly support from the community on those languages.

Well, I'd be a lot happier supporting saner languages like Lua, Ruby, Python, …, heck even C++ because its strings are so much easier to work with. Soooo many of the problems people have with C are related to strings.
05 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Soooo many of the problems people have with C are related to strings.


Yeah. I'm going to go with pointers in general. The inclusion of references in C++ is nice if they are used meticulously. I think C++ is quite a bit more elegant than C. C kinda depends on the user to supply all cadence and nuance.
05 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I don't think "expressiveness" is the right word here. Many languages that don't let you do pointer math are in many ways far more "expressive" than C because you can say much more things much more easily at a much higher level of abstraction.


That isn't what I meant, but yes, that is true. I was getting more at the fact that a lot of languages lack any facility for user-supplied high-level data structures. Not generally the big popular general purpose languages of course, but more than a few of the oft-used domain languages, dating back from UNIX's inception to modern home-grown game scripting environments. (Why they don't all just use Lua instead of implementing their own slower, non-standard, less-functional toy language is beyond me.)

Even when you are talking about languages that are as expressive, C of course retains (without modern technology) the speed advantage, which is still even today very vital for a number of industry segments. Not MUDs, not by a long shot, but I wouldn't want to implement an audio codec demuxer in Python, for example. :)

Quote
I guess it depends on how you're defining "expressiveness". If we're just talking about the quasi-mathematical language-theory meaning of how many things you can say in a language (where e.g. first-order logic is strictly more expressive than propositional logic), then assembler can do at least whatever C can and so is at least as expressive.


Well, of course. C is nothing more than a pretty frontend for assembler. Hence why it lacks any form of higher-level data structure. C's only real purpose in being was to provide a portable and slightly more human-friendly porcelain finish over top the multitude of vendor-proprietary assembly languages for all the vendor-proprietary hardware architectures of the day.

My intended use of "expressiveness" was just that by using C you can do pretty much anything that the hardware is capable of doing, while with a great deal of other languages, you can only access a subset of the hardware's capabilities, and that some languages even restrict you from implementing certain algorithms.

Quote
I think the enduring popularity in the mudding community is the unduly representation in the codebases and the friendly support from the community on those languages.


That I fully agree with, but I was referring to its global popularity. It is still, at almost 40 years old, the language of choice for systems programming (esp. if you include C++ under C's umbrella). Several of the most popular high-order languages took their syntax almost directly from C/C++ because of the popularity of the languages, and unless you're working Web software (which is easily what over 80% of professional programmers do these days, I think) there's a damn good chance that your job entails you working in C and/or C++.

Heck, I've touched more pure C code in the last two days than any other language, and I _do_ work on Web software for a living. ;)

Still a crappy language choice for MUDs given all the alternatives.
05 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
unless you're working Web software (which is easily what over 80% of professional programmers do these days, I think)

Do you have data for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious. Seems like a big number to me. Then again my bias is fairly strong as relatively few people from my school that I know went on to do web programming. I guess it depends on what falls under the umbrella of web programming…
06 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
elanthis said:
unless you're working Web software (which is easily what over 80% of professional programmers do these days, I think)

Do you have data for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious. Seems like a big number to me. Then again my bias is fairly strong as relatively few people from my school that I know went on to do web programming. I guess it depends on what falls under the umbrella of web programming…


I think he means web-app[ish] development with Rails and such. And yeah, it's huge right now.
06 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, huge yes, but 80% is a big number.

Speaking of big, I see that your sig just got bigger, too. :evil:
06 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Well, huge yes, but 80% is a big number.

Speaking of big, I see that your sig just got bigger, too. :evil:


I couldn't see the strikeout. ;P

I have old eyes.
06 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
elanthis said:
unless you're working Web software (which is easily what over 80% of professional programmers do these days, I think)

Do you have data for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious. Seems like a big number to me. Then again my bias is fairly strong as relatively few people from my school that I know went on to do web programming. I guess it depends on what falls under the umbrella of web programming…


That number was firmly pulled out of my ass. You know what they say: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. ;)
06 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
David Haley said:
elanthis said:
unless you're working Web software (which is easily what over 80% of professional programmers do these days, I think)

Do you have data for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious. Seems like a big number to me. Then again my bias is fairly strong as relatively few people from my school that I know went on to do web programming. I guess it depends on what falls under the umbrella of web programming…


That number was firmly pulled out of my ass. You know what they say: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. ;)


Haha. 80% or 20%–it's all the same thing. Only scholars can really decipher what percentages actually mean anyways. ;)
06 Jun, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd say 82.57% of percentages are wrong anyways.
07 Jun, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
That number was firmly pulled out of my ass. You know what they say: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. ;)


I believe that's the result of floating point rounding errors.
07 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
elanthis said:
That number was firmly pulled out of my ass. You know what they say: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. ;)


I believe that's the result of floating point rounding errors.

Yes, those floaters make it hard to get a firm grasp on a significant sample.
07 Jun, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
Tyche said:
elanthis said:
That number was firmly pulled out of my ass. You know what they say: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. ;)


I believe that's the result of floating point rounding errors.

Yes, those floaters make it hard to get a firm grasp on a significant sample.


I know that condition… way too much fiber. ;-)
07 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
rofl@Tyche
20.0/34