[Freeciv-Dev] Re: suggestion

[Grzegorz Borowiak <grzes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't be so scared of C/C++. It's not much more difficult than perl. And
in my idea those bots would be developed from a skeleton, which has many
pre-defined functions (especially i/o) and has the big comment "YOUR CODE
GOES HERE" in some specific place.

Creating new language only for writing civ bots is not a good idea,
because everyone would have to learn it. If we use C/C++, only those
people, who don't know it yet will have to learn. If you make script
language easy (and therefore easy to learn), it will not be powerful. And
mutually. Dream about a language that is both easy and powerful is utopia
and will never come through.

Anyhow, if you create a script language, you must define some
instructions/commands of this language. It's better to make these
instructions/commands just as C/C++ functions/subroutines. And then
writing in C/C++ is just calling them. It's not harder than writing a
script. And user is not limited by script language possibilities.

And if someone is good enough to write AI, then is good enough to know or
learn C/C++. Such a person must have an experience with some languages, if
wants to deal with AI, so has easy task. And, as I wrote, it hasn't
necessarily be exactly C/C++. It could also be e.g. Pascal, which is quite
easy. Other languages that are compiled to native machine code (for tough
guys also assembler will be good :-)) are good here, because these
machine-code-generating languages are linkable and highly replaceable one
by another. Skeleton modules, e.g. pre-defined functions and interface to
server may be in C/C++ and it will pretty link with Pascal user function.

                                         _____________
Grzes                  \_______________________|_______________________/
grzes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                         (_)
http://gnu.univ.gda.pl/~grzes/
'Parowkowym skrytozercom mowimy NIE!'