Two questions:
1) Would a Haskell counterpart to Crystal Space 3D, if
implemented, potentially be fast enough to run a
project similar to the 3D real-time Crystal Space
3D-based MMORPG "PlaneShift" ( see
http://www.planeshift.it/main_01.html ) on Mac OS X
10.2.8 Jaguar or above?
2) For a hobbyist programmer with a computer science
algorithms background including some coursework in
lambda-calculus, with some programming background in
Scheme and C, and with some knowledge of Java, for the
purpose of writing a project similar to "PlaneShift,"
which of the following options would more likely be
easier to accomplish?
Option A)
Use the existing Java scripting support already
available in Crystal Space 3D, and deal with debugging
potentially larger programs in Java.
Option B)
Write a Haskell binding for the existing Crystal Space
3D libraries, and then deal with debugging potentially
smaller programs in Haskell.
I have written some programs in Scheme, C, and Java,
but have only audited some lectures, written a few
programs, and studied a few chapters on Haskell so
far.
As it turns out, there is a pretty large conceptual gap between the
design of most object oriented libraries and idiomatic Haskell. This
makes writing useful bindings in Haskell for such libraries a tricky
business. If you want it to be easy, I'd say stick with an OO language
that will more closely match the design (caveat: I am not familiar with
the design of CS, but I assume it is OO because its written in C++). If
you want to learn more about Haskell, then the ease question takes a
back seat. To be honest, I don't think there is any easy way to tackle
a project of this size -- the planeshift people et al have been working
on this for a long time.
As to performance, I suspect it would be OK, if you were sufficiently
good with a profiler.
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