- A book on 80286 assembly language - Oh, how powerful was that processor! Search as I might I can't find it anywhere, although I know I bought my copy from Farnell (well, actually my father did, which means I was early teens).
- Ralf Brown's PC Interrupts - This was essential to any DOS coder, this was jam packed with data. But as a big book with no current use it had to go. Here is a pic below of the front cover
Anyway, enough reminiscing. I did have a point!
Anyway, where were we?
I came across this book while looking through the bookcase:
Now, this is intriguing, but it's hard going. It covers rendering all the way up to polygons on a pixel by pixel basis - there was no blitting or 3D graphics cards back then! Also, there is great swathes of C++ code, hugely verbose but undoubtedly extremely fast for the time.
So, I've been having some thoughts. I really fancy the idea of doing my own flight simulator, maybe using the book as inspiration and stimulation. I do actually rather like the idea of being retro and doing pixel blitting, Bresenham's algorithm et al.
I don't want to use some old style imperative language though, I want to use something modern and functional (preferably).
Language Choice
So, what languages could I choose and what are the pros and cons?
| Language | Positives | Negatives |
|---|---|---|
| Clojure | JVM libraries, Java2D, Concurrency, fun | Poor debugging, slow? |
| F# | Great IDE, performance, syntax | Mono VM is slow, IDE is Windows only |
| Haskell | Performance, native binary | Is a pure language a good idea for such a stateful project? |
| O'Caml | Performance, native binary | Single threaded |
| Scala | Good compiler, performance, Java2D, JVM libraries, very similar to original C++ | Too similar to the original C++?!! |
Now, what about some more fun languages to do this in? Here are some scripting choices, although they do have a performance hit of course.
| Language | Positives | Negatives |
|---|---|---|
| Python | Pygame, libraries | Not functional |
| Ruby | Nice syntax, libraries | Not functional |
Now, if I want something quickly then I suspect Ruby is the way to go as I'm more familiar with the syntax than python (despite it being better supported for this sort of thing).
I think Haskell might be too much of a challenge, and I think Scala will be too easy. I'm also thinking that as it's effectively a 'game' type application that a natively compiled languages might be best - although I'm quite aware that both O'Caml and Haskell have a VM.
Okay, I've make a decision - O'Caml it is. It natively compiles, it's fast and I like the syntax. I'm not overly familiar with the libraries so it'll be a fun exercise. Also, it's a functional language but I can if I feel naughty use mutable variables (or even OO).
