[MUD-Dev] newbie

[Derrick Jones]

On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Sauron wrote:

> [snip]
> > More generally, what is the distinction between softcode and hardcode?
> [snip]
> 
> abilities. The real tradeoff is w/ hardcode you increase your cpu usage,
> and softcode it chews up your ram. Most good mu*s tend to have a balance
> of both types of programmed systems. 

Does this tradeoff stem from the nature of softcode/hardcode?  I've
noted that the two most widely used examples (LP for softcode and DIKU for
hardcode) show this to be the case, but I had always assumed that it was
(flaws in the???) the core server designs that caused this phenomenon, and
that they were accomplished in hard/soft code to be purely coincidental.
For example, a quick glance of DIKU-clone source shows that 80-90% of the
CPU drain comes from the pulse/heartbeat/tic system where everything is
polled for continous update.  (disclaimer:  that isn't meant as a flame of
the source...I actually started with a gutted Circle many moons ago, but
the first thing I did was strip that system and put in an event-driven
one, which seemed to speed things up conciderably)  On the other side of
the coin, I could see where an eternal language could increase the RAM
overhead (caching the language itself, as well as code-bloat from having
multiple people generating generally unoptimized code), but a well managed
system would minimize this and the bloat would be negligable. 
Any thoughts?

Gunther