4 ms·

This is an excellent talk. It digs really deep into the history of OOP, from 1963 to 1998. The point is that in 1998 the commercial game "Thief" was developed u

This is an excellent talk. It digs really deep into the history of OOP, from 1963 to 1998. The point is that in 1998 the commercial game "Thief" was developed using an entity component system (ECS) architecture and not regular OOP. This is the earliest example he knows of in modern commercial programming. During his research into the history of OOP he discovered that ECS existed as early as 1963, but was largely forgotten and not brought over as a software design concept or methodology when OOP was making its way into new languages and being taught to future programmers. There's lots of reasons for why this happened, and his long talk is going over the history and the key people and coming up with an explanatory narrative.

lemonberry 1y ago
Thank you for this summary. I'm a hobbyist programmer and want to watch this, but having a few concepts to hang my hat helps contextualize this for me.
inopinatus 1y ago
You can do ECS in any programming paradigm. It’s not incompatible with OO at all. There’s no need for the object model to be congruent to a static representation of a domain, in a line-of-business app it is much better for it to be congruent to workflow and processing. Heck I’ve even done ECS in Rails for exactly this reason. I never accepted the Java/C++ bastardisation of OOP and still think that Erlang is the most OO language, since encapsulation and message passing is so natural.
pjmlp 1y ago
ECS is a part of OOP, hence why languages like Objective-C introduced protocols, while others like C++ and Eiffel went the multiple inheritance route. Even Smalltalk, post Smalltalk-80 implementations eventually added traits, alongside its single inheritance model.
- zaphar 1y ago
  I am not sure what the link between ECS and protocols, traits, and multiple inheritance is? ECS is mostly about memory layout not typed interfaces as far as I know.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Nope, that is the gist that game devs then apply to ECS story. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, lets start with the first question, how are ECS systems implemented in any random C++ or Rust game code?
    - user____name 1y ago
      > Nope, that is the gist that game devs then apply to ECS story. What do you mean? ECS is simply a game programming pattern to implement an entity system. > If you want to go down the rabbit hole, lets start with the first question, how are ECS systems implemented in any random C++ or Rust game code? Conversely how would you implement it in a procedural language like C or Pascal? ECS is just a switch in emphasis from an array of structures (entities) to a structure of arrays (systems) paradigm. I fail to see what the Object Oriented paradigm has to do with any of it.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        A pattern that relies on OOP constructs like protocols, interfaces, traits, depending on which language is being used. Arrays and structures mappings isn't ECS, that is Data Oriented Design, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design
        nickitolas 1y ago
        Since you already quoted wikipedia, here's what it says about ECS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system > Entity–component–system (ECS) is a software architectural pattern mostly used in video game development for the representation of game world objects. An ECS comprises entities composed from components of data, with systems which operate on the components. > Entity: An entity represents a general-purpose object. In a game engine context, for example, every coarse game object is represented as an entity. Usually, it only consists of a unique id. Implementations typically use a plain integer for this > Common ECS approaches are highly compatible with, and are often combined with, data-oriented design techniques. Data for all instances of a component are contiguously stored together in physical memory, enabling efficient memory access for systems which operate over many entities. > History > In 1998, Thief: The Dark Project pioneered an ECS. So, according to wikipedia: - An entity is typically just a numeric unique id - Components are typically physically contiguous (i.e an array) - Their history began with Thief pioneering them in 1998
dsego 1y ago
No offense, but this reads as a GPT generated summary.
- tgv 1y ago
  I had difficulty understanding what irked me about the comment, but indeed, that's it. The mix of superficiality, congeniality, and random details sound like an AI response. However, I don't think it is. But AI surely fucks up our trust.
  - dsego 1y ago
    Why not, it's a fresh new account, and doesn't bring any new insight, why would anyone genuinely write a comment like that?
    - chrisg23 1y ago
      I think I have autism. Anyway this is how I tend to organize thoughts and relay them. If it looks like AI then I don't know what to do about and is kinda scary really.
      - dsego 1y ago
        I guess it's more common in comments to read someone's opinion on different parts, whether they agree or disagree, a related anecdote or personal experience with the topic, or a remark focused on a specific detail that stands out.
      - tgv 1y ago
        It doesn't matter how you organize thoughts, it's about how other people read your text, and AI has fucked up our perceptions. First your praise the talk. That sounds AI like. LLMs are trained in the annoying American way of starting with something positive, even if it's irrelevant, or isn't meant. You're probably somewhat conditioned to do the same. But in this forum, those comments are not encouraged. The upvote button should be enough to express that. The rest reads like a summary, also an LLM feature, but nobody asked for a summary, and you're not announcing that you want to give one. It sets the reader up for some conclusion or evaluation, which never comes. There's no personal thought, except for the praise, anecdote, criticism, or supplementary information. If all you wanted was to recommend the talk to people, I think an effective way to do would be something like > I liked the talk. So much that I didn't know about the history of OOP, or how ECS (Entity Component System) could have been a competitor. Recommended, but it's a bit long though. Not that that will get you a lot of upvotes (which shouldn't be a goal anyway), but it expresses someone's reflection on the link, which others can understand as support for their decision to check the link, or not. AI has fucked up our perception. That's not your fault, of course, but you can try to skirt around it. But not everybody has to write every opinion everywhere. It's fine if your communication doesn't always fall on fertile ground. You don't have to apologize or blame the spectrum. Some people have better ways with words than others.

lemonberry 1y ago

Thank you for this summary. I'm a hobbyist programmer and want to watch this, but having a few concepts to hang my hat helps contextualize this for me.

inopinatus 1y ago

You can do ECS in any programming paradigm. It’s not incompatible with OO at all. There’s no need for the object model to be congruent to a static representation of a domain, in a line-of-business app it is much better for it to be congruent to workflow and processing. Heck I’ve even done ECS in Rails for exactly this reason. I never accepted the Java/C++ bastardisation of OOP and still think that Erlang is the most OO language, since encapsulation and message passing is so natural.

pjmlp 1y ago

ECS is a part of OOP, hence why languages like Objective-C introduced protocols, while others like C++ and Eiffel went the multiple inheritance route. Even Smalltalk, post Smalltalk-80 implementations eventually added traits, alongside its single inheritance model.

zaphar 1y ago
I am not sure what the link between ECS and protocols, traits, and multiple inheritance is? ECS is mostly about memory layout not typed interfaces as far as I know.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Nope, that is the gist that game devs then apply to ECS story. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, lets start with the first question, how are ECS systems implemented in any random C++ or Rust game code?
  - user____name 1y ago
    > Nope, that is the gist that game devs then apply to ECS story. What do you mean? ECS is simply a game programming pattern to implement an entity system. > If you want to go down the rabbit hole, lets start with the first question, how are ECS systems implemented in any random C++ or Rust game code? Conversely how would you implement it in a procedural language like C or Pascal? ECS is just a switch in emphasis from an array of structures (entities) to a structure of arrays (systems) paradigm. I fail to see what the Object Oriented paradigm has to do with any of it.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      A pattern that relies on OOP constructs like protocols, interfaces, traits, depending on which language is being used. Arrays and structures mappings isn't ECS, that is Data Oriented Design, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design
      - nickitolas 1y ago
        Since you already quoted wikipedia, here's what it says about ECS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system > Entity–component–system (ECS) is a software architectural pattern mostly used in video game development for the representation of game world objects. An ECS comprises entities composed from components of data, with systems which operate on the components. > Entity: An entity represents a general-purpose object. In a game engine context, for example, every coarse game object is represented as an entity. Usually, it only consists of a unique id. Implementations typically use a plain integer for this > Common ECS approaches are highly compatible with, and are often combined with, data-oriented design techniques. Data for all instances of a component are contiguously stored together in physical memory, enabling efficient memory access for systems which operate over many entities. > History > In 1998, Thief: The Dark Project pioneered an ECS. So, according to wikipedia: - An entity is typically just a numeric unique id - Components are typically physically contiguous (i.e an array) - Their history began with Thief pioneering them in 1998

dsego 1y ago

No offense, but this reads as a GPT generated summary.

tgv 1y ago
I had difficulty understanding what irked me about the comment, but indeed, that's it. The mix of superficiality, congeniality, and random details sound like an AI response. However, I don't think it is. But AI surely fucks up our trust.
- dsego 1y ago
  Why not, it's a fresh new account, and doesn't bring any new insight, why would anyone genuinely write a comment like that?
  - chrisg23 1y ago
    I think I have autism. Anyway this is how I tend to organize thoughts and relay them. If it looks like AI then I don't know what to do about and is kinda scary really.
    - dsego 1y ago
      I guess it's more common in comments to read someone's opinion on different parts, whether they agree or disagree, a related anecdote or personal experience with the topic, or a remark focused on a specific detail that stands out.
    - tgv 1y ago
      It doesn't matter how you organize thoughts, it's about how other people read your text, and AI has fucked up our perceptions. First your praise the talk. That sounds AI like. LLMs are trained in the annoying American way of starting with something positive, even if it's irrelevant, or isn't meant. You're probably somewhat conditioned to do the same. But in this forum, those comments are not encouraged. The upvote button should be enough to express that. The rest reads like a summary, also an LLM feature, but nobody asked for a summary, and you're not announcing that you want to give one. It sets the reader up for some conclusion or evaluation, which never comes. There's no personal thought, except for the praise, anecdote, criticism, or supplementary information. If all you wanted was to recommend the talk to people, I think an effective way to do would be something like > I liked the talk. So much that I didn't know about the history of OOP, or how ECS (Entity Component System) could have been a competitor. Recommended, but it's a bit long though. Not that that will get you a lot of upvotes (which shouldn't be a goal anyway), but it expresses someone's reflection on the link, which others can understand as support for their decision to check the link, or not. AI has fucked up our perception. That's not your fault, of course, but you can try to skirt around it. But not everybody has to write every opinion everywhere. It's fine if your communication doesn't always fall on fertile ground. You don't have to apologize or blame the spectrum. Some people have better ways with words than others.