[MUD-Dev] MUD Design Fundamentals (Was: Looking for books...)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

(I'm being short, because I don't feel like taking things over and
over again)

[Ola:]
>>2. reloading may not give you what you want, it is easy to make
>>blunders 

[J C Lawrence:]

>Who says that you have to reload text?  Why not make it orthogonal? 
>Text, code, data, read, write, its all the same really.

Reload text? 

>3. fixing a bug in the code may not be enough if the bug is >present
>in the stored structure.
>
>Then make the code and the stored structure one and the same.  I fail
>to see a reason for the persistance mechanisim to distinguish between
>code and data.

What difference does this make?  Besides I need a lot of power, hence
compiled, optimized code.

>>I only have some experience with persistence, maybe there are
>>approaches that are better, but I know for sure that I wouldn't rely
>>on persistence alone in any long term project.
>
>???  I don't understand.  How could one rely on persistance alone for
>a project? 

I'll help you out: using a language provided persistent object-store
for saving state upon termination.  We've so far discussed programs
running in a shared memoryspace, so saving during runtime isn't
really theoretically interesting.

>which engendered that post.  Many of the areas that Greg asked about
>had frequently been discussed here, and I assume, were areas that Greg
>has little familiarity with.

Mebbi, I don't know Greg.  I only "know" what I read.

>Sure, it is, or should be, fairly easy to swap out a a list for a hash
>table for a BTree or whatever.  However moving a base design from a
>weighted tree or web to a neural net is a sufficient paradigm shift
>that its rarely that easy.  In cases like that, if the principles can
>withstand it, I recommend taking the big design and implementation
>leaps early.  

Well, anyone attempting to introduce neural nets without running
separate prototypes for quite some time would most likely fail anyway..
:^)

Of course, what one has to think about is whether one need browsability
(for all objects do ...) or other type of functionality. So a list
cannot easily be swapped out for a hashtable if order is important... 

>>BUT I do believe, with the help of whatever libraries being
>>available, some general programming knowledge and the major reference
>>books, that "hobby" projects will be able to provide running systems
>>exploring new concepts, provided that the designteam is able to focus
>>on a few concepts.  I don't believe it is lack of specialized
>>knowledge (such as NLP design) that prevents them from surfacing.
>
>Agreed.
>
>-- 

>----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
>...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
>