RE: growth agendas and OO

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at indiegamedesign dot com>]

Eric McDonald wrote:
>
>   Post-7.5/Pre-7.6:

Ok, so when is 7.5 going to get kicked out the door?

> > I am willing to contribute to the OO-ification of Xconq, if
> > you want to
> > pursue that agenda.  If you think that agenda is misguided,
> > then it's best to find out now.
>
> I don't think that this is necessarily misguided in the long term.
> But the C infrastructure works pretty darn good at present. We
> even have some "polymorphism" due to nifty macro magic....

Nifty polymorphism with macro magic?  You are scaring me.  I appreciate
that you're working with a legacy codebase, and that a working codebase
has inherent value.  But surely, in the year 2003 you do not expect
people to take this as serious OO.

> Xconq currently attempts to be at a C89 compliance level to make
> sure that we are supporting as many platforms as possible.

The kernel, fine.  But we've established that not all GUIs are equal on
all platforms, nor are all build environments.

> If you
> say that we should just ditch those platforms, then you are simply
> stating an opinion which is not even all that pragmatic.

Python runs everywhere, so I don't see any issue with sticking it in the
kernel, other than making sure it works.  You might resist that idea
now, saying "No no!  We don't want instability and change!"  But that is
the price of moving on.  I think you'll like Python, you'll start using
it, then you won't object anymore.

> I
> actually did put out a feeler a while ago, to see about moving the
> compliance level to C99; the conclusion I reached is that the
> time is not right yet.

You know, when I compile the stuff using VC 2003, I get all sorts of
warnings.  I don't see what would be such a big deal about killing all
those warnings, they're mostly trivial int conversion and comparison
warnings.  I'm not volunteering to undertake that task right now.  I'm
just saying, if this is what's in the way of the "C99 compliance," it is
not a big deal to take a day to get rid of all of those warnings.

But, I don't know beans about what C99 compliance implies, nor do I
care.  The Windows way is to force people to upgrade.  And by that I
don't mean grabbing Micro$oft's new OS every 2 years.  I hate them for
doing that, and I won't!  I mean that in 2003 you don't support Windows
95 anymore.  It's a waste of development time that benefits almost
nobody.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.