[MUD-Dev] Re: Why modules? (Was: Inheritable modules)

[James Wilson]

On Sat, 31 Oct 1998, Thandor wrote:

>I don't see why dynamic loading is a requirement. It certainly is at least
>some extra work, as the dynamic loader must be writen. If extra work is
>being done, surely there should be some sort of payback for it. I can't see
>where the payback lies - any advantages it might have seem to be offset and
>then some more by the disadvantages. I admit I thought dynamic loading was
>the way to go too ... but after thinking about it some more, I'm not longer
>seeing why, other than the fact that it would be a cool thing to do. But
>cool pieces of code make nifty geek toys, not good muds.

one of the motivations for using dynamic loading was so interpreted code could
be compiled to native code and loaded at runtime. cf. Hobbit. MudOS has been
doing this for I think a couple of years. Many arcane programming language
systems (such as some of the ML implementations) also do this. The whole point
is that then you can have many of the advantages of interpreted code with much
of the performance of C.

is it required to run a mud? obviously not. honestly, though, the amount of
code needed for a dynamic loader is pretty small. (I am speaking from
experience.) the big issue is not dynamic loading or static compilation. the
big issue is module interfaces.

James