1. Re: EUPHORIA Digest - 16 Feb 1999 to 17 Feb 1999 (#1999-49)
- Posted by Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen <nieuwen at XS4ALL.NL>
Feb 19, 1999
-
Last edited Feb 20, 1999
>There has been some writing about other programming
>languages and their specialities. Has anyone thought
>about in which cases Euphoria might be the #1 choise?
Many. Algorithmically its really strong, it has a good performance and makes
most projects 'feasable'.
>Some people are making acion and rpg games in EU,
>but this can of course be done just as well in many
>other languages, including ASM.
Oh yes, esspecially for high-level AI such as in RPG's you want to use ASM.
Not prolog, or some other logic programming language.
>if you want the coolest, fastest possible shoot'em-up,
>you might want to use pure ASM.
'coolest' as in good AI ? Pure ASM out of the question.
Plus, with all the different hardware support, and the latest games
recompiler/generating their internal's based upon the
hardware and other options, it would be rather uneasy. Secondly, such games are
so complex, humans are incapable of beating the
optimization of a good C-compiler, simple because the program is too complex.
They can optimize tiny little port, not a whole
engine. No, the latest hardcore games (Outcast is coming .. that'll be a nice
game) are written using pretty high-level
algorithims. I mean asm-commands that are fast on P II MMX's are slower on
normal pentiums and visa versa. Cache size matters,
3d hardware support, video bus type, etc. To create one generic program that
will work equally well on all systems in pure
machine code might be possible, but is overly complex, will be extremely slow,
and extremely buggy. And esspecially when messing
with 3d hardware, etc. crashes should never be more than a GPF.
>if you want a good spreadsheet, C might be the choise,
>since the task is too complicated for ASM, but overall
>speed is also very important when hundreds of functions
>are called for each cell while processing huge lists of data.
For a spread-sheet like program, EUphoria would be great.
It would be much handier than Euphoria.
>Other programs are made to deal with mathematical
>problems, text-related problems or other special fields.
Remember, that certain 'languages' could/can just as easily be an interface.
For example, Euphoria's dynamic memory managment could be added to C by
simply writting a library. Off course the code will
be a little more complex, but the features stay the same.
Prolog (as far as I know about it now) is programming language, or just a
database system. Its just a point of perspective.
>So what about Euphoria?
Euphoria is generic and thats nice. You can add a lot, but it doesnt solve
one particular problem on a really elegant way.
Its a 3rd way language (like 3rd way politics 
.. like C. Its a basis for
solving many problems, with the right tools
(libraries, interfaces, etc.)
>So EU could be called a language designed to deal with
>one particular kind of problems: The complex one.
>(-: because it's so simple 
Not true. Euphoria is not that capable of handling complex projects that well.
Modula-2 for example, thats a tool for really really complex programs.
And as to 'structures', my opinion is known.
Ralf
