[Freeciv-Dev] Re: suggestion

[Mathias Broxvall <matbr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Grzegorz Borowiak wrote:
> 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.

Sorry to barge in on your discussion... but haven't you all forgotten what
the most commonly used language for AI's still is? How about if you make
a nice framework for interfacing custom C/C++ code *and* give guile bindings
as suggested previously (a long time ago). The average AI programmer
probably knows both C and C++ very well... but that doesn't mean that he'll
wan't to use them exclusivly. Some things, mostly concerning AI, is easier
when you're using a LISP and can be implemented much faster (programmers
time). Some things will be crucial for the execution time of the AI and the
serious programmer will implement it in C/C++ as extra guile bindings.
A further advantage of using a scriping language is the garbage collection...
no mater how good you are you still end up with atleast some memory leaks when
writing complex C code... which must be debugged, and then the AI changes again
-> more memory leaks + crashes etc.... 

Well... if you atleast implement a nice framework for interfacing shared
libaries (written in C/C++) and provide an API there probably will be guile
bindings shortly... and some serious AI code can be written :-)

[Does anyone have any use for some graph manipulation algorithms... such
as finding bottlenecks in a graph (place a fortress at that single non mountain
cell between me and the enemy etc..)]

/ Mathias Broxvall

PS. Before the occassional besserwisser comes, yes. guile implements an R4RS
compliant Scheme, not a Common Lisp....