[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Development Digest

[Dr. Cat]

> At this point in time, you are probably right.  However, I see no reason
> why they couldn't or won't in the future.  Sure you can do a better job
> if you take the time in c or c++, but as I see hardware prices plummet
> and 1Ghz machines on the horizon, I have a hard time wanting to make
> myself go through all the hard work.  I think it is becomming more and
> more important for people to realize how much their own time is worth,
> compared to the computer's.

I've been optimizing for "how much precious programmer time does this 
take to implement" for many years now.  More and more aao s we've moved 
further and further from the 1 MhZ 6502s I got started on.  With each 
advance in computing power, more problems fall into the category where I 
can use a slower but simpler algorithm rather than the best one I can 
think of, and still be far, far faster than the program needs to be.  I 
never even write in assembly any more, I can get away with doing 
everything in C now (except for a graphics library, which I licensed from 
someone else rather than write my own.)

What I don't see is where writing code that simply doesn't HAVE any 
garbage to collect is harder than writing code that has some.  To me it's 
the other way around, I'd have to be using more of them new-fangled 
unnecessarily fancy data structures and dynamic reallocation techniques and 
stuff in order to be able to generate garbage that a garbage collector or 
heap compacter would need to go messing with.  I just allocate way more 
than I need of everything, right at startup, and then just keep on using 
it till shutdown without any fancy shuffling stuff around.  I don't see 
where there's "more hard work" involved in that than doing it some other 
way, it seems pretty straightforward to me.  :X)

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   Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions       ||       Free alpha test:
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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.