Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have to go to 1977 or prior to slag a language, there are tons of languages that will disappoint you.
PL/I
I would assess C++ has already outpaced PL/I complexity, and I do enjoy using C++.
A Minecraft server written in COBOL
81–90 of 127 posts
Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#82> Well, there are quite a lot of rumors and stigma surrounding COBOL. This intrigued me to find out more about this language, which is best done with some sort of project, in my opinion. You heard right - I had no prior COBOL experience going into this. I hope they'd write an article about any insights they gained. Like them, I hear of these rumors and stigma, and would be intrigued to learn what a new person to COBO…
One of the rumoured stigma is that the object-oriented flavour of COBOL goes by the unwieldy name of ADD ONE TO COBOL YIELDING COBOL. At least it doesn't have the unrumoured stigma of older FORTRANs, which ignored whitespace, allowing: DO 10 I=1.10 to silently compile an assignment: DO10I = 1.10 instead of signalling an error for the syntax of the loop the flight software programmer had intended: DO 10 I=1,10
No one seems to have written a Minecraft server in FORTRAN yet... but I think your comment just gave some people here ideas.
Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#83Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#84Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#85I'm sure this is some kind of fallacy, but I feel I quite often see ostensibly impressive small side projects like this written in simple plain languages like C (or here COBOL). Every similar, e.g., Rust project I see seems almost non-functional despite having 10x the SLOC. My working theory is that simpler languages lend themselves to blueprinting ideas and getting something working even with an ugly messy codebase,…
I don't think it's a fallacy. As someone who has 2 WIP games in Rust, I noticed that getting a very minimal gameplay prototype was pretty easy (given a sane engine choice)* but then adding features made the code balloon in size. Switching from singleplayer to multiplayer was a mess. I also fell for some fads and had to waste time removing them. And Rust really, really doesn't like heavily interconnected graphs of gam…
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Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#86Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#87I'm sure this is some kind of fallacy, but I feel I quite often see ostensibly impressive small side projects like this written in simple plain languages like C (or here COBOL). Every similar, e.g., Rust project I see seems almost non-functional despite having 10x the SLOC. My working theory is that simpler languages lend themselves to blueprinting ideas and getting something working even with an ugly messy codebase,…
People that get things done usually don't care about code quality. I noticed myself in a place where I just never finished anything anymore by trying to write something to last. Over the years I've found a good balance, but I've found that iterating over garbage will eventually turn into something good and I've been doing so since.
My previous employer certainly got things done. They got so many things done, that I found it impossible to add features to their codebase.
Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#88My kids are just getting into Minecraft on the switch and I am a bit confused by the options for hosting a server. I’d love to hop on and play with them on a self-hosted server, what’s the current best way to do that or is that level of cross-play between PC and Switch on a self-hosted solution even possible? Edit: I don’t currently play, which is why I’m not familiar with what’s out there
I got a Java server running on my ubuntu machine in the basement, but the child prefers to play on XBox.
Rather than spend my time fucking around with setting up a server, I just gave Microsoft $3 a month to use Realms.
I've got enough chores.
Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overloading can be easily abused, but the very complicated expressions that can appear in programs for scientific/technical computing are immensely more readable when using operator overloading like in C++ instead of using named functions, like in languages that forbid operator overloading, e.g. Java. In scientific/technical computing you have frequently, even in the same expression, dozens of different kinds of addi…
It's precisely when "you have frequently, even in the same expression, dozens of different kinds of additions, multiplications, divisions, etc., between scalars, vectors, matrices, tensors, complex numbers, various kinds of physical quantities, and so on" that operator overloading should be driven by custom syntax macros. (E.g. in a Rust-like language you might define math_expr!(...), float_expr!(...), matrix_expr!(.…
And, if you think the wrapper $type_expr! is too verbose, just use [blackboard bold M](...) or something.
Agda is my favorite example of a language that _judiciously_ uses Unicode symbols to express "concepts similar to something but is actually substantially different so let's not get them confused"... as opposed to other theorem proving languages of its time [1]
[1] https://people.inf.elte.hu/divip/AgdaTutorial/Functions.Equa...
Re: A Minecraft server written in COBOL
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s why I like Ada (and VHDL). Somewhat verbose, perhaps, but much more readable than more “modern” languages.
As a teenager I swore by Turbo Pascal's begin/end syntax and C++ at the time, with its overloads and macro system was just noise to me. Many years have passed since but C++ with its overloads and macro system is still largely noise to me.
#define begin {
#define end }