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Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

brianmckenna.org

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Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#61

Post by pdntspa »

foolfoolz wrote: post #49
winrid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it doesn't really look like the kind of thing I'd design for 12-year-olds to use? Lua would probably work just as well and been a better choice...

this comment is wrong on multiple levels - this reduces fortnite’s audience to 12 year olds. the average age of a fortnite player is an adult - fortnite custom mods / modes are nearly all developed by adults (the people who will write in this language) - verse is designed to be used more widely than just fortnite in other games by other game develoment professionals (that are nearly all adults) i don’t understand how…

The game acts like it is designed for kids. It follows all the obnoxious gen Z trends, everything is in superbright colors, and speaks their design language. Hard to imagine that its userbase isn't mostly kids.

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#62

Post by nequo »

whateveracct wrote: post #33
ABeeSea wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pitch for SPJ to leave MS research on Haskell for a video game company must have been pretty compelling so I’m very interested to see how this evolves.

oh I'm $ure it wa$

I think it may have been desire for impact.

SPJ spoke with disappointment about his lack of impact on Microsoft's products. Excel did end up adopting lambdas but that took a decade and a half. Inside Epic, he can roll out functional programming to a young audience that hasn't done much programming before.

And from what I can infer, Microsoft Research seems to be paying quite well. Do you have knowledge that indicates otherwise?

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#63

Post by 542458 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #49
winrid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it doesn't really look like the kind of thing I'd design for 12-year-olds to use? Lua would probably work just as well and been a better choice...

this comment is wrong on multiple levels - this reduces fortnite’s audience to 12 year olds. the average age of a fortnite player is an adult - fortnite custom mods / modes are nearly all developed by adults (the people who will write in this language) - verse is designed to be used more widely than just fortnite in other games by other game develoment professionals (that are nearly all adults) i don’t understand how…

Average age is a pretty bad metric for most things because “not adult but still engaged in society” is a pretty narrow band. If you have five 14-year-olds and one 40-year-old, the average age is over 18 (i.e., an adult) even though 83% of that group are not adults.

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#64

Post by jibe »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #50
foolfoolz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this comment is wrong on multiple levels - this reduces fortnite’s audience to 12 year olds. the average age of a fortnite player is an adult - fortnite custom mods / modes are nearly all developed by adults (the people who will write in this language) - verse is designed to be used more widely than just fortnite in other games by other game develoment professionals (that are nearly all adults) i don’t understand how…

I'm not necessarily saying you are wrong here in the case of fortnite, but do you have data to back up that the average fortnite player is an adult? It seems like in general it tends to be wildly more popular with younger people, generally kids and teens - although i don't have data for this either, just based off what I've personally seen.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/

62% of Fortnite players are 18-24

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#65

Post by eru »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #2

Tangential, and because I had to look it up: > Verse has been designed by some people who really know what they’re doing: Lennart Augustsson, Joachim Breitner, Koen Claessen, Ranjit Jhala, Simon Peyton Jones, Olin Shivers, Tim Sweeney The listed people are all luminaries of the functional programming world (and adjacent, like theorem proving and software verification), particularly Haskell. Hell, Simon Peyton Jones i…

To add: Lennart Augustsson created the first publicly available Haskell compiler.

I worked with him briefly, and also talked over beers. Great chap!

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#66

Post by eru »

jeron wrote: post #12
542458 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time… the language is interesting , and I’m sure it’s technically very well designed, but I’m not sure it’s a good fit for the task they’ve got. The apparent goal is for this to allow anybody to democratically contribute to Fortnite (a game most popular with a fairly young audience), but the language feels very technical and not-beginner-friendly to me. For example, it’s fairly symbol-heavy (making it int…

+1 to this. If anything, you have a language that looks like it was made by luminaries, for luminaries. If you want something that would get kids that wanted to get into programming to create custom Fortnite modes, you want something that looks closer to Scratch or Python. I want to say Roblox has made programming quite accessible to children iirc

> If anything, you have a language that looks like it was made by luminaries, for luminaries.

Well, the opposite of that approach gives you Go.

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#67

Post by eru »

ABeeSea wrote: post #16
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hearing "Haskell mashed with Erlang"

The pitch for SPJ to leave MS research on Haskell for a video game company must have been pretty compelling so I’m very interested to see how this evolves.

Wasn't he kicked out of MS research for silly regulatory reasons?

I mean he had lots of options, so the pitch from Epic must have still been pretty good.

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#68

Post by eru »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #43

Am I the only one who thinks this is possibly the least appealing programming syntax they've ever seen?

It's a bit peculiar, but no worse than many other languages I've seen.

The examples they gave could have been improved with a bit of syntax highlighting.

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#69

Post by [deleted] »

wkdneidbwf wrote: post #42
nightski wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I was writing C++ in junior high and I am by no means that bright. Just persistent. I think in some ways we have become too afraid of some upfront complexity at the expense of beginners in order for more well engineered systems. I think a slightly higher learning curve is not always a bad thing.

there’s nothing wrong with a persistence-centric approach like you took, but there’s also certainly nothing wrong with catering to your audience. we should strive to provide a better gateway than we had when we were young.

[deleted]

Re: Type system of Fortnite's Verse language

#70

Post by Falkon1313 »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #50
foolfoolz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this comment is wrong on multiple levels - this reduces fortnite’s audience to 12 year olds. the average age of a fortnite player is an adult - fortnite custom mods / modes are nearly all developed by adults (the people who will write in this language) - verse is designed to be used more widely than just fortnite in other games by other game develoment professionals (that are nearly all adults) i don’t understand how…

I'm not necessarily saying you are wrong here in the case of fortnite, but do you have data to back up that the average fortnite player is an adult? It seems like in general it tends to be wildly more popular with younger people, generally kids and teens - although i don't have data for this either, just based off what I've personally seen.

I have no data but anecdotes. I'm in my 40s and whenever I played squads, trios, or duos, I was playing with people in their 20s or 30s. Also, it's one of those rare online games where you can queue in at 3am or in the middle of a school day and almost instantly get into a game, and it's a game requiring 100 people per match. Other online games I've gotten into, 15 player games, essentially died out late at night or during schooldays. Fortnite doesn't.

Yes, there are a lot of kids playing it, and it's very popular with them. But there's also a huge audience of adults.

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