6 ms·

AFAICT he doesn't reach any particularly satisfying conclusions and just speculates that Haskell is an interesting avenue of research that may bear fruit for ga

AFAICT he doesn't reach any particularly satisfying conclusions and just speculates that Haskell is an interesting avenue of research that may bear fruit for game development. It doesn't seem like he has put the same amount of effort in experimenting with Lisp. He doesn't mention any attempt to port Wolfenstein over to Common Lisp. Instead he seems content speculating from the same position many Lisp doubters have after reading a few books and working on some exercises (which is ironic considering his impetus for the Haskell project). I hope he gave Lisp the same treatment as Haskell before he drew any conclusions but it doesn't seem like he has from this speech. Lisp for game development could be an interesting avenue (and has precedent in AAA console development). The dynamic vs. static argument isn't the interesting feature. Personally I think the symbolic model of computation is far more compelling. I've read posts by programmers who've written a high-level language for writing financial trading algorithms in Common Lisp that compile down to optimized VHDL for running on FPGAs. Sure you don't have a static analyzer to tell you you've done something wrong before you run your programs but I've rarely seen that becoming an issue in practice at that level. There are plenty of Common Lisp libraries that have been around for a long time that don't require much maintenance which makes me wonder where this belief that dynamic languages don't produce solid, maintainable code comes from. In my rather limited experience I find the over-specification required by statically typed language to be a impedance to writing robust, compose-able software (at least it's much more difficult and tends to lead to Greenspunning if you try to go that route). Either way... a very interesting talk and it's cool to hear that he's experimenting with this stuff. Carmack is in a rare position to have such a breadth of experience and deep technical knowledge that even just messing around with this stuff might make waves throughout the industry.

bad_user 13y ago
If you'll go read his opinions, you'll see that he has been a strong advocate for static analysis. His position is very understandable since he spent a lot of time working on complex pieces of C/C++ code, encountering a lot of subtle accidental errors that could have been avoided with better tools for static analysis or with a better language. He also worked mostly on client side software, where the fail fast / fail hard strategy of projects built in dynamic languages doesn't work so well. Lisp vs ML vs others is a very subjective issue since languages involve different kinds of trade-offs, so optimal choices depend on the project or on personal style. Also, this is John Carmack. For me he was a God 10 years ago and he's still one of the best and most practical developers we have today. Seeing him talk about Haskell is amazing. BTW, I've been a big fan of Scala lately, and I don't see myself using much Haskell precisely because its tools for modularity seem limited. In Scala you can use OOP to build abstract modules, with the much hyped Cake pattern being based on that. Dynamic languages are naturally more modular, however I still prefer static languages.
- agentultra 13y ago
  I agree. When Carmack speaks, I do listen. He's a very good programmer and has the level of experience and technical expertise few will get to enjoy. I think it's awesome to see how far he has come from being a C purist, to C++, and now nice functional languages like Haskell.
- sfvisser 13y ago
  > ...I don't see myself using much Haskell precisely because its tools for modularity seem limited. > Dynamic languages are naturally more modular Why is that? I'm pretty convinced pure and especially lazy languages allow for great modularity. See http://augustss.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-evaluation-in.html http://augustss.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-eva... for an interesting view on this.
  - taeric 13y ago
    I would think it is because of how "modules" can effectively be "bolted" on top of existing things quite easily. Consider putting a new "module" on a bicycle. If you were doing it statically, it would have to have the screws in the proper place to be able to attach as it needs. Dynamically, however, you just use a zip tie to hold your piece onto the bike. To be sure, if you buy a nice bike, many of the common attachments have "static" points where things can be added. If you want to place a holder for a phone, however, you are much more likely to do something that is much more adaptable at fitting things on. becomes much more easy to bolt on funct
- pnathan 13y ago
  Yeah, Carmack has weight due to his history of being incredibly technical and writing lots of incredibly useful code. Also, he has a huge profile in the industry. He's been a heavyweight proponent of static typing for a while - 2-3 years IIRC - and so it doesn't totally surprise me that Haskell is up his alley. It's particularly notable that he prefers it as a technical lead as a low-pass filter on bugs.
- jerf 13y ago
  Haskell's tools for modularity cut in a dimension you're not used to, and if you're not experienced with it, won't see. Percentage-wise in the last 15 years I haven't spent that much time in Haskell, but it's Haskell's tools I'm missing more often in imperative languages than the other way around. (And note the "more often"; it's not that I never miss more conventional tools in Haskell, it's just that I spend more time missing Haskell tools in other languages.)
aryastark 13y ago
I can't watch his talk right now, but at QuakeCon he recently discussed Scheme, and the potential for embedding it in a game. I think he also pondered what Quake would have been if QuakeC was based on Scheme instead. But my basic issue with talking about Carmack with respect to programming languages is that he never struck me as an expert on languages. Or even programming for that matter. The source code to Quake was on the messy side of things. His rationale for switching to C++ always seemed a little on the thin side of things, and seemed more like industry pressure than anything. He's great on concepts, on graphics, and keeping up with OpenGL and whatever NVidia/ATI are doing. But he's just now coming around to Scheme and Haskell. I don't really think his perspective on languages carries that much weight to be honest. But I'll listen to him talk about it anytime.
- robrenaud 13y ago
  To me, that is a great reason to listen to him. He builds big and complicated programs that people actually use.
  - chebert 13y ago
    Agreed. I listen to him because I want to know what's practical, not necessarily what's theoretically stimulating.
  - aryastark 13y ago
    > He builds big and complicated programs that people actually use. That's kind of an insult to, well, every working programmer.
    - sseveran 13y ago
      Most people don't build big and complicated programs.
      - Argorak 13y ago
        Please qualify "most people".
agumonkey 13y ago
Already mentioned in previous threads, but Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), who made a long presentations about the benefits of FP around 2006, is presenting a paper about a formalism related to dependent typing http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4791 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4791
- teamonkey 13y ago
  Here's one of the presentations comparing C++ to Haskell http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1277 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1277 http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-... (PDF)

bad_user 13y ago

If you'll go read his opinions, you'll see that he has been a strong advocate for static analysis. His position is very understandable since he spent a lot of time working on complex pieces of C/C++ code, encountering a lot of subtle accidental errors that could have been avoided with better tools for static analysis or with a better language. He also worked mostly on client side software, where the fail fast / fail hard strategy of projects built in dynamic languages doesn't work so well. Lisp vs ML vs others is a very subjective issue since languages involve different kinds of trade-offs, so optimal choices depend on the project or on personal style. Also, this is John Carmack. For me he was a God 10 years ago and he's still one of the best and most practical developers we have today. Seeing him talk about Haskell is amazing. BTW, I've been a big fan of Scala lately, and I don't see myself using much Haskell precisely because its tools for modularity seem limited. In Scala you can use OOP to build abstract modules, with the much hyped Cake pattern being based on that. Dynamic languages are naturally more modular, however I still prefer static languages.

agentultra 13y ago
I agree. When Carmack speaks, I do listen. He's a very good programmer and has the level of experience and technical expertise few will get to enjoy. I think it's awesome to see how far he has come from being a C purist, to C++, and now nice functional languages like Haskell.
sfvisser 13y ago
> ...I don't see myself using much Haskell precisely because its tools for modularity seem limited. > Dynamic languages are naturally more modular Why is that? I'm pretty convinced pure and especially lazy languages allow for great modularity. See http://augustss.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-evaluation-in.html http://augustss.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-eva... for an interesting view on this.
- taeric 13y ago
  I would think it is because of how "modules" can effectively be "bolted" on top of existing things quite easily. Consider putting a new "module" on a bicycle. If you were doing it statically, it would have to have the screws in the proper place to be able to attach as it needs. Dynamically, however, you just use a zip tie to hold your piece onto the bike. To be sure, if you buy a nice bike, many of the common attachments have "static" points where things can be added. If you want to place a holder for a phone, however, you are much more likely to do something that is much more adaptable at fitting things on. becomes much more easy to bolt on funct
pnathan 13y ago
Yeah, Carmack has weight due to his history of being incredibly technical and writing lots of incredibly useful code. Also, he has a huge profile in the industry. He's been a heavyweight proponent of static typing for a while - 2-3 years IIRC - and so it doesn't totally surprise me that Haskell is up his alley. It's particularly notable that he prefers it as a technical lead as a low-pass filter on bugs.
jerf 13y ago
Haskell's tools for modularity cut in a dimension you're not used to, and if you're not experienced with it, won't see. Percentage-wise in the last 15 years I haven't spent that much time in Haskell, but it's Haskell's tools I'm missing more often in imperative languages than the other way around. (And note the "more often"; it's not that I never miss more conventional tools in Haskell, it's just that I spend more time missing Haskell tools in other languages.)

aryastark 13y ago

I can't watch his talk right now, but at QuakeCon he recently discussed Scheme, and the potential for embedding it in a game. I think he also pondered what Quake would have been if QuakeC was based on Scheme instead. But my basic issue with talking about Carmack with respect to programming languages is that he never struck me as an expert on languages. Or even programming for that matter. The source code to Quake was on the messy side of things. His rationale for switching to C++ always seemed a little on the thin side of things, and seemed more like industry pressure than anything. He's great on concepts, on graphics, and keeping up with OpenGL and whatever NVidia/ATI are doing. But he's just now coming around to Scheme and Haskell. I don't really think his perspective on languages carries that much weight to be honest. But I'll listen to him talk about it anytime.

robrenaud 13y ago
To me, that is a great reason to listen to him. He builds big and complicated programs that people actually use.
- chebert 13y ago
  Agreed. I listen to him because I want to know what's practical, not necessarily what's theoretically stimulating.
- aryastark 13y ago
  > He builds big and complicated programs that people actually use. That's kind of an insult to, well, every working programmer.
  - sseveran 13y ago
    Most people don't build big and complicated programs.
    - Argorak 13y ago
      Please qualify "most people".

agumonkey 13y ago

Already mentioned in previous threads, but Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), who made a long presentations about the benefits of FP around 2006, is presenting a paper about a formalism related to dependent typing http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4791 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4791

teamonkey 13y ago
Here's one of the presentations comparing C++ to Haskell http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1277 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1277 http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-... (PDF)