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Gardon
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Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 157
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 Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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What about game processing? I've never used stacks before, but they're hard to research as far as particulars go.
Like what about having functions on the stack? I keep track of a gamestate, updated by different options, and push or pop functions from main to a stack that is then executed.
Is there any possible way to do this?
Jason
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LeoDraco
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Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 584
Location: Riverside, South Cali
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| Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:08 am Post subject: |
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| nodtveidt wrote: | | LeoDraco wrote: | | Again, going along with closed source, proprietary, authoritarian dictates is beneficial how? |
*sigh* I wanted to avoid this, but seeing as how you just don't *get it*, I guess I have to explain. |
How very condescending and patronizing of you. Since you don't *get it*, perhaps it's my turn to explain, yes?
| Quote: | | First of all, you're looking at the issue from a commercial point of view. That's kinda silly. |
A commercial point of view is the only logical reason why anyone would want to develop for Windows --- your language in describing the amount of people a game you write may reach exemplifies this mentality. That you consciously ignore the fact that you yourself are looking at it from a commerical point of view is amusing.
| Quote: | | Closed source, proprietary, authoritarian...so? It's also widespread, standard, well-documented, and accessible. |
Windows is widespread, as I mentioned in my previous post, due to questionable business practices Microsoft performed during the last decade; I'm sure that if GNU/Linux was preinstalled on all computers that Dell sold, there would be more people savvy to the Unix experience.
The "standards" of Windows are those dictated not by a community the entry of which is freely available to anyone, but by those that work at Microsoft; probably not even fully that: I'm sure that lowly code-monkeys employed thereat have a full say in how the "standards" work.
I shall grant that I have not read too much of the Windows 32 API, nor do I delve to deeply into the help files on most Windows applications; however, I will still contest your assertion that all things Windows are well-documented: the .NET help information --- something written by one of Microsofts departments --- is absolutely horrible; it's sloppy, obfuscated, lacking in examples that should be there, and full of examples that should not be there.
Again, the accessibility of Windows is due to the way it is sold, and this asinine mentality of Joe Users that "expensive" == "good."
| Quote: | | The OSS world knows very little of these key features. Widespread? Yeah right. And don't bother naming isolated examples (like Apache). |
Used practically in most Computer Science departments worth their salt the world over. IBM has started to offer OSS solutions --- such as Linux --- for clients of their products. Again, your argument is stilted: as OSS is commonly not sold by default, of course it is not widepread; alter that business model, and I think that would change.
| Quote: | | Standard? HAHAHAHA! About the only "standard" the OSS world knows and whines about is C++ compliance. |
I can point to a great counter-example of OSS standards: the web-standards designed and documented by the W3C. Again, I think your notion of "standard" is stilted: you are looking at it through the mask of "One Company Makes the Standards," rather than by "One Community Makes its Standards;" when has Microsoft made anything that fit community standards?
Now, if you were talking about silly things like user interfaces, recent versions of some of the OSS DEs have been making massive efforts to provide standaradized interfaces to applications running on them; GNOME, for example, has something they call the Human Interface Guidelines, which, while only standard for a specific DE, is fast becoming important for GNOMEs development.
Also, Visual C++ has been notorious for being ANSI/ISO imcompliant.
| Quote: | | Well-documented? Dream on...I've yet to see a properly written man page. |
GCC's man page is pretty well written; it fully describes all of the command line options, and even delves into such arcane topics as language support and extensions the suite provides. Man pages, by the by, are actually rather deprecated on some newer Linux distros, with emphasis placed more on either distro specific help, or upon other command line tools, such as info/tekdocs. I can find pretty much everything I need to know about a library or tool from its documentation, provided, of course, that it provides such documentation. (Which, of course, may not even be provided offline; for example, it is becoming relatively popular, in this age of burgeoning internet connections, to utilize online documentation, which helps centralize the effort, and allow it to be much more dynamic and accessible.)
| Quote: | | Accessible? Only if you know about it. |
True, and, indeed, about the only valid point of your argument; if nothing else, I shall grant Microsoft fantastic on one point: spreading itself like a virus, precluding knowledge of better --- read, to prevent veins popping out on your head, more adaptable --- solutions.
| Quote: | | Just because something is open source doesn't mean you can do anything with it. Sure, it gives you the *right* to do it, but the common computer user doesn't care about that...they care about the application *working*. |
It often takes Microsoft months to work out a fix to patch their system, while computers running their software become unusable in the meantime. While the computer virus (here using the term in its broadest sense, to encompass as many different forms of security attacks as possible) is not Windows specific, they certainly are targeted at Windows the most prolifically. OSS provides for, at the very least, an opportunity to have peer-reviewed patches accessible in a time span much less than the typical Microsoft patch.
| Quote: | | They also don't care if it's proprietary or not...if it runs on their system, who gives a damn...that's their mindset. |
They probably do care if they have to pay for it; granted, for a personal game project they download from somewhere on the internet, that probably will not be the case; however, for something like Office or Photoshop, those can be, depending upon the version purchased, non-trivial sums spent on products which are proprietary, when perfectly suitable --- for the common user --- free, OSS alternatives exist. Dismissing out of hand the common users strangle hold on their wallet is silly.
| Quote: | | And let's face it...the common user uses Windows, not Linux or any other potential contender. |
Because thats what Microsoft has allowed the market to be saturated with; if Dell (or any other PC manufacturer/distributer) offered people the option of which operating system they wanted factory-installed on their newly purchased machines, and if that distributer offered mockups in their stores of all the operating systems available, things would be different. As it is, the prolific nature of Windows across computers has nothing to do with its merits, and everything to do with how it is sold.
| Quote: | | If you want to go big in the computer world, you *have* to know Windows...or be one lucky SOB like Linus (don't count on it). |
Again, your language here is commensurate with that of the commercial point-of-view you were so disparaging of.
| Quote: | | But the same issues also apply to the programmer, not just the end user. If you know that 95% of your users are going to be Windows users, do you invest the extra time in making your app run on alternate operating systems? I can hear it now...all the zealots saying "But but but if you write portable code then you don't have to worry about it!!!!!!1111111oneoneone". Sure, sure...and you also take a performance hit with all the middleman kludges you have to use just to make your generic, vanilla code run more than one platform. Sorry but no thanks...if I had to make a cross-platform product, I'd not do what all the lazy fscks do, which is to use these middleman libraries...I'd go as low as possible on each platform to get the best performance possible. And that is why learning the Windows API is beneficial...maximum performance on a Windows system. And that is absolute truth. |
The amusing thing about your argument is that you claim to be wanting to avoid the extra hassle of making the generic code work on all systems; however, you shall, for a cross-platform application, waste more time doing what you suggest as an alternative to the generic case.
Your performance argument is silly, as well: most applications are bound by bottlenecks that no amount of low level programming could possible overcome: use input, for example, will generally preempt any potential speedups gained by writing explicitly on the graphics metal; networks connections will cause program lag, even if you have fine tuned the program to use the fastest, most arcane parts of the DX suite; database or file access will slow the application --- especially when the database or file is on another machine on the computer's network --- far more than a generic blitting routine would.
| Quote: | | I don't mean to start a war over this (frankly I'd like to avoid it, as it accomplishes nothing) but since you took the offensive, I've got no choice but to respond in kind. |
How very funny your statement is: I make an innocuous statement about OSS, and then you come in and make a disparaging joke about me being some insane trombone player (whatever that means; are trombone players looked down upon, over there in PR?), and then you have the audacity to call me a GREAT fool in passing. Who exactly went on the offensive there?
And seriously: with the exception of a few people I have bumped heads with around here, I have heard very few comments made about me being an insane trombone player by the majority of the active members here; true, I may be overtly zealous about certain constructs, but I can point my finger very easily at a number of members here who are just as zealous about topics important to them.
The problems with statements such as that last quote of yours, or that apologetic expression I made in my last post on this topic, is that people disregard them: there is a certain inalienable desire to absolutely have the last word on any matter, explicitly for the reason you cited: we have to justify our existence to ourselves, we cannot leave a topic without saving face, and letting some bumblehead have the last word on the matter is grating to the senses.
As I obviously do not *get it* (your point of view), and as you obviously do not *get it* (my point of view), this discussion is only potentially interesting and useful to those that are sitting on the proverbial fence; to reiterate what has been expressed previously, this accomplishes nothing: I shall not change my foolish (so you claim) sentiments about Windows/OSS, nor, so it seems, shall you change your sentiments about Windows/OSS. This micro-discussion, with each of us lambasting the other, only positively serves to derail Gardon's original topic even further.
So, in the interests of face-saving for those involved, and to move this topic back on topic, I move that we either (a) drop this entirely, (b) move discussion to PMs, if it needs to be further discussed, or (c) move this to its own Off-Topic thread, where all bumbleheads involved can make asses of themselves, if that truly need be done.
_________________
"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake
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Gardon
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Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 157
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| Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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Leo, you have way too much time on your hands. You have to learn to let stuff go and not worry about reposting against people you'll never meet.
Jason
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