3 ms·

How is that different from LPMUDs? LPC sounds exactly like that language.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
As I recall there are some important differences between LPC and LambdaMOO. More philosophical differences showing the background of the people who worked on them. Original LambdaMOO inspiration from the TinyM* world (if I vaguely recall Stephen White aka ghond the original MOO author came out of that community) plus was worked on by some Lisp and Smalltalk/Self inspired people (Pavel Curtis the maintainer worked at Xerox PARC and one of the key authors/wizard yduJ/Judy had some Lisp background if I recall) -- while the background with LPMUD was more RPG/gaming oriented. LPMUD/LPC worked on editing class files and compiling them, while in LambdaMOO you edited your objects and verbs right in the environment. LambdaMOO had an object database and code was part of the database, while in LPMUD the code itself was in a separate filesystem. As an analogy: LambdaMOO was more like Smalltalk (live editing objects inside an image/object database) while LPMUD was more like editing a filesystem you dynamically recompiled. Now I believe LPMUD had an editor etc. right in the environment but you were editing a filesystem, not the objects themselves. LambdaMOO was prototype oriented not class-based, so encouraged a lot more one-off authoring without messing up class hierarchies and the like. You could just dynamically throw together a new thing by parenting from an old thing and adding methods and props right on it and then later you could formalize that into something other people could use. Or not. If I recall LPC didn't have the same kind of granular permissions system that MOO did and so there was more restrictions on who was allowed to program and who not. There was little risk in giving a MOO user a "programmer bit" on LambdaMOO as the environment was very sandboxed and capable of handling lots of amateurish programmers without stepping on each other. "Wizards" had the ability to modify shared common prototypes, but people who were "just" programmers could run off and create their own things and other people could borrow from them, etc. I suspect most LambdaMOO users ended up as programmers. I think the LPMUD model makes more sense for building a game and iterating on it. LambdaMOO was about a shared authoring environment where people built things all day long (and chatted) rather than played a game. Finally, LPC (or dialects of it...) I believe executed quite a bit faster than LambdaMOO. So much so that I believe at one point some people I knew of actually wrote a LambdaMOO compiler/environment in LPC -- maybe the DGD driver? -- and it outperformed LambdaMOO itself.
- BryantD 6y ago
  Yep, ghond was part of the Tiny* community. I think you've nailed the distinctions quite well. There was a strong academic bias in the Tiny* world -- James Aspnes, author of TinyMUD, was a CMU professor. "Fuzzy" Mauldin was also working at CMU post-PhD when he wrote Julia, the primordial TinyMUD bot (and before he went off to found Lycos). Which is not to say that there weren't a bunch of rowdy college students on TinyMUD (oh hi, that's me), and as I recall MUD itself was written while Richard Bartle was an undergrad. -- Garrett (#17086)
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    Thanks. I never played much in the TinyM* world, pretty much went straight to LambdaMOO. Some really interesting community there, though, and I was always intrigued by the MUF forth in TinyMUCK as kind of a different model to MOO in LambdaMOO. -- Karl Porcupine (#18502 originally then #49702 later). Just logged in, looks like it's been 2 years as there were two birthday cakes waiting for me in my mail :-)

As I recall there are some important differences between LPC and LambdaMOO. More philosophical differences showing the background of the people who worked on them. Original LambdaMOO inspiration from the TinyM* world (if I vaguely recall Stephen White aka ghond the original MOO author came out of that community) plus was worked on by some Lisp and Smalltalk/Self inspired people (Pavel Curtis the maintainer worked at Xerox PARC and one of the key authors/wizard yduJ/Judy had some Lisp background if I recall) -- while the background with LPMUD was more RPG/gaming oriented. LPMUD/LPC worked on editing class files and compiling them, while in LambdaMOO you edited your objects and verbs right in the environment. LambdaMOO had an object database and code was part of the database, while in LPMUD the code itself was in a separate filesystem. As an analogy: LambdaMOO was more like Smalltalk (live editing objects inside an image/object database) while LPMUD was more like editing a filesystem you dynamically recompiled. Now I believe LPMUD had an editor etc. right in the environment but you were editing a filesystem, not the objects themselves. LambdaMOO was prototype oriented not class-based, so encouraged a lot more one-off authoring without messing up class hierarchies and the like. You could just dynamically throw together a new thing by parenting from an old thing and adding methods and props right on it and then later you could formalize that into something other people could use. Or not. If I recall LPC didn't have the same kind of granular permissions system that MOO did and so there was more restrictions on who was allowed to program and who not. There was little risk in giving a MOO user a "programmer bit" on LambdaMOO as the environment was very sandboxed and capable of handling lots of amateurish programmers without stepping on each other. "Wizards" had the ability to modify shared common prototypes, but people who were "just" programmers could run off and create their own things and other people could borrow from them, etc. I suspect most LambdaMOO users ended up as programmers. I think the LPMUD model makes more sense for building a game and iterating on it. LambdaMOO was about a shared authoring environment where people built things all day long (and chatted) rather than played a game. Finally, LPC (or dialects of it...) I believe executed quite a bit faster than LambdaMOO. So much so that I believe at one point some people I knew of actually wrote a LambdaMOO compiler/environment in LPC -- maybe the DGD driver? -- and it outperformed LambdaMOO itself.

BryantD 6y ago
Yep, ghond was part of the Tiny* community. I think you've nailed the distinctions quite well. There was a strong academic bias in the Tiny* world -- James Aspnes, author of TinyMUD, was a CMU professor. "Fuzzy" Mauldin was also working at CMU post-PhD when he wrote Julia, the primordial TinyMUD bot (and before he went off to found Lycos). Which is not to say that there weren't a bunch of rowdy college students on TinyMUD (oh hi, that's me), and as I recall MUD itself was written while Richard Bartle was an undergrad. -- Garrett (#17086)
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  Thanks. I never played much in the TinyM* world, pretty much went straight to LambdaMOO. Some really interesting community there, though, and I was always intrigued by the MUF forth in TinyMUCK as kind of a different model to MOO in LambdaMOO. -- Karl Porcupine (#18502 originally then #49702 later). Just logged in, looks like it's been 2 years as there were two birthday cakes waiting for me in my mail :-)