[MUD-Dev] Object Models

[Miroslav Silovic]

"John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com> writes:

> I'm still leery of getting into the design of a skill system as an example.
> I'm not sure how I'd structure it.

This ties into your comment about dynamic object system design being a
harder problem than static system design. I disagree with that. Losely
specified problems are precisely the thing for dynamic languages/OO
systems to handle, because they allow rapid and global changes in the
interfaces.

The other thing about dynamic languages is the programming paradigm:
namely, the basic assumption of a static language is the existance of
edit/compile/test/debug cycle. In this situation, you really want your
errors caught during compilation phase, because -all other- phases are
prohibitively expensive, both time-wise and effort-wise.

Dynamic language allow for interactive compilation. In this paradigm,
the module size is *one function*. You write a single method, and you
have a command line and an instance of a running environment (note,
this means you have not only the runtime loaded, but also live
data). You test this function on live data as soon as you've written
it. This merges edit, compilation and debugging portions of the cycle,
leaving only a good test suite - but you write it individually for
each function, and run it as soon as the function is written. This
programming paradigm is drastically different from the static
programming style, and allows both for rapid design and for rapid
refactoring of large portions of any application.

--
How to eff the ineffable?
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