[MUD-Dev] [TECH] Programming languages (was: Neverwinter Nights)

[John W Pierce]

Bruce wrote:

> But, is a regular imperative programming language really the most
> useful thing in this sort of situation?

> What about an declarative language, an constraint system, or even
> something like a GUI programming environment like Labview?

> Are the object models within those languages the most suitable for
> that type of environment, or has more recent research over the years
> turned up better models? How might something like the use of
> aspect-oriented programming techniques change the class hierarchy or
> the overall layout of the system?

Those are some interesting questions. I think the answer for all of
them is that nobody knows.

Aspect-oriented programming and its relatives (adaptive programming,
subject-oriented programming, etc) aren't really language
specific. The intent of these (to the degree I understand them, which
isn't very much) isn't as much to change the way things are done as it
is to give you tools for looking at what you've done in different ways
for different purposes. In principle, you could build support for them
for any language. Bill Griswold's group at UCSD has some tools for
aspect-oriented stuff for Java, and there's the AspectJ project at
Parc. IBM's VisualAge now has subject-oriented support for C++ and
they're working on Java and SmallTalk.  Stuff like this would be
useful for MUDs, but I don't think it would much change the way you'd
look at the basic problems.

As for non-procedural languages, probably the ones of most interest
would be OCaml and Curry. Languages like these provide a very
different way of looking at programming. It's pretty interesting to
look at them closely and try to figure out how you would, say, build a
combat system with them.

-- John W Pierce, R2 Systems
   jwp at r2systems.com


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