Re: Scheme Efficiency (was Re: Limitations of Inform and TADS?)


Tue, 14 Nov 1995 16:39:27 GMT

In article <47k4bg$jab@life.ai.mit.edu>, dmb@lf.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett)
writes:
> I certainly agree that Scheme can be small. I don't think it can be as
> fast as a good implementation of a language like C for most tasks, though.

On the other hand, it'd be a lot faster to write adventures in than C.
And any run-time speed penalty over raw C would be insignificant for this
particular application.

Almost everything you deal with in an adventure is a list of some sort.
Lists of properties of an object, inventory lists, lists of exits, lists
of objects visible... so whatever language you choose should definitely
have lists as first class data types.

Mind you, I wrote my first adventure in BASIC, and my second in 6502
assembler, though I never finished that one...

I'd certainly like to see a Scheme-based adventure programming system. A
good Scheme compiler for UNIX, Mac and PC would be a good start; then
build the rest as libraries.

I've tried many Scheme systems. MacGambit, SCM, Scheme48, scsh... I
can't find anything that'll run on my Mac at home *and* UNIX and Windows.
If I try and stick to what all the interpreters support, I find myself
missing useful features like time and date functions...

mathew

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