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Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

mortoray.com

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Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#121

Post by WalterBright »

Bekwnn wrote: post #62
nicwilson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish D as better C worked better in that realm, but it's missing a few crucial things. Such as? We are always looking for for things that get in the way of use.

Under "unavailable features" https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html#consequences 3, 4, and 5 are all pretty sore points. 2 would be as well if it weren't extremely likely that for any game you create roll some sort of reflection system. It would be a sore spot for small projects. 3 - No access to classes and polymorphism is a bit of a downer. Although I'm a big believer of data-oriented design, I think there are still m…

> 3,4,5

Those rely on the garbage collector. If you are willing to do C style memory management, they are all available with betterC.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#122

Post by WalterBright »

comex wrote: post #88
FeepingCreature wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like you should just be using D, not "Better C-style D"? All those features are not in BetterC because they need a garbage collector, but they are of course in D proper. For smaller projects, I'd recommend just ignoring the GC until you run into actual issues with it, then optimizing for the specific issues.

That's easy to say, but as long as C++ and other languages can do those things without a garbage collector, D seems somewhat less attractive. (I'm not the OP but I've had a similar experience with D.)

You can do all of them without a garbage collector - you just have explicitly manage the memory yourself.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#123

Post by frenchy »

oldandtired wrote: post #8

What he is experiencing is the reality of most people's lives. The boredom and drudgery of doing the hard yards every day. Most people do not have the luxury of doing what is interesting to them. It is a case of just having to knuckle down and complete what has been started. From my personal perspective, it's nice to have side projects that are interesting and learning exercises. The reality is that if these side pro…

> If something is worth starting then it is worth finishing.

Perhaps that's true, but I think it's often quite difficult to know whether a project will be worth finishing before you start working on it.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#124

Post by hluska »

mortoray wrote: post #73
hluska wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more charitable explanation is (in his words), "it’s no longer fulfilling my goals, and it’s not as fun as it once was." When I look at it from his point of view, I feel quite sorry for him. The language's forum has 9 posts in the last calendar year. 4 of those are him solving a problem using Leaf. Then, I check out the status page and realize that, for all the work he has done, Leaf is still in a very primitive st…

Thank you.

I have a lot of respect for you and what you did. Thanks for being inspiring and good luck with whatever you work on next.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#125

Post by chaoticmass »

ChrisFoster wrote: post #78

Some people seem to be objecting to this as a fluff piece, but it speaks to me on a deep level. I develop free software because I like to learn and create; because good tools make work a joy; because I like to make useful things. And I've parted ways with several projects, some of them mine and some of them from others. It's painful each time I leave a useful project unmaintained. And yet, I don't find long term proj…

I worked for years on a game engine so I could develop a game I had an idea for. In doing this, I learned C, Lua, 3d graphics, threading in Linux, and a lot more. I never finished my game, only getting as far as some demos, but I'm still greatful for the learning experience.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#126

Post by tlarkworthy »

foota wrote: post #36
tlarkworthy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do anything programmatically in unity. I think professionals tend towards this. You use the world editor only for artistic expression, the spatial layout and tuning etc. where previewing layout really saves time. For very specific effects like universe turning, you have to do a lot of code work in a niche area, but it's still quicker than building a particle engine from scratch. Sometimes you can cheat the ef…

What in the world is universe turning?

The OP roadblock (turning the particle system).

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#127

Post by mamcx »

jhasse wrote: post #80
mamcx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same, but get the opposite idea. I procastinate in build the language I want (a relational engine, not a DB, a language ) always thinking "Is better to let that to pros". But more time I do the same things over and over, more I'm convinved I could abstract my main tasks (around data manipulation) in a simple language: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/8ygbvy/state_of_rust_... But the idiot of me think…

> and don't wanna do C/C++. Give C++17 a try :)

C++ have a lot of nice stuff now, but anyway soon or later need to take from the old mess. If I wanna suffer, I prefer something with a more consistence...

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#128

Post by rwallace »

mortoray wrote: post #91
z92 wrote: post #87

For my language, instead of targeting LLVM, I targeted C. That made me take off fast, because everything in C is available from day 1. What I did is build an extra layer over C to make it behave more like a scripting language. Used it for my website.

I chose LLVM from the start since I knew some of the challenges that interested me couldn't be done at the C level -- or rather it'd be more complicated at that level than at the LLVM level.

Which challenges? As far as I can see, LLVM is essentially C in SSA syntax; what semantic differences have you come across?

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#129

Post by danbolt »

I work as a programmer in the games industry, as well as make games by myself on my spare time.

Like how the author describes, I really had to divorce myself from the thought of being a software designer or computer scientist to even start to make the sort of games I wanted to make. Even then I'm hardly a competent game developer, but I'm at least somewhat proud of my work so far.

Re: Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language

#130

Post by danbolt »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
mikekchar wrote: post #12

I had a similar thought process (but luckily without spending time implementing something). I want to write a game. I thought, "None of the current languages works quite the way I want. I know! I'll write a language specifically for my game and just keep implementing the bits I need". Then I thought, "Wait. If I do that, I'll spend 90% of my time writing a language and 10% of my time writing a game". So I was saved.…

One of my motivations for writing a compiler was to get my game Empire to run faster. Wound up with a career writing compilers, not games.

Do you think you'd ever go back and try to make a game once again? [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14877776

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