On 19/02/2013, at 9:55 AM, Dobes Vandermeer wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> What made Felix stand out for me, as an aspiring game developer, was:
> • Static type checking (compared to Lua/Python)
> • Garbage collection (compared to C++)
> • Easy binding to C++ (compared to anything except C++)
> • "High level language" features like closures, data types
> • Punctuation and braces ("{ ... }" rather than "do .. end", f(x) is
> normal rather than f x)
> Until you've made a determination that the target audience of your marketing
> will be "game developers", you should probably file my opinion under
> "interesting but probably useless."
Game developers are certainly a target (including ME).
However they're not THE target. Felix is a general purpose
application development language like C++, Ocaml, and a bunch of other
such languages.
My view is, a domain specific language, eg one designed for game
developers, is doomed to failure. That's NOT how you make a language.
General purpose languages that serve multiple audiences serve
particular audiences better than any special purpose language ever will.
I've seen a lot of special languages and almost universally they're
a failure, even in their target market. They look good to start.
But rapidly, the lack of general programming constructions dooms
the programmer to hacking up what they need with an lame feature
set.
So, if there's a market, its probably "people with enough vision and
insight to see the potential on offer and adapt it to their own market".
I will support such developments. That what I do: I'm a tool maker.
But I'm not going to target a particular retail market (unless I get
offered money :)
[Well now I actually do have to go off and drill holes in my own boat..
above the waterline of course :]
--
john skaller
skal...@users.sourceforge.net
http://felix-lang.org
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