Mark de Wever <[email protected]>: > Can be expected yes, but I'm sure there are several players who are also > C++ coders and do not contribute. We hoped by allowing AIs to be written > in Python we would attract more people who wanted to help writing AIs > and that was no big success.
I think Sergei Popov has answered this one. > > Actually, I lied. It was more like two days :-). Read my detailed account > > here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882 > > Sorry but I can't believe you were as efficient in Python as in C after > just 2 or 4 days of coding. Read the article. In C, the central technique I used (the metaclass hack) would have been impossible. So there's a serious argument that Python made me far *more* productive than I could have been in C during that two days. Since you press the point, I'll admit that I don't actually expect most programmers could learn to write Python so productively in two days - I am exceptionally talented and experienced in relevant ways, and that was high performance even for me. Nevertheless, I think it is reasonable to expect programmers with normal ability to achieve parity with C in a week to ten days of steady practice. > Memory leaks in C++ can also be detected by valgrind. Your argument was > that with Python there would be no memory leaks. In pure Python, zero memory leaks, yes. That had been true ever since the garbage collector was enhanced to scavenge circular structures. You changed the subject a bit by bringing in reference leaks in the C++ bindings. Really the class of errors I had in mind when I said "never" was wild-pointer and aliasing bugs. > > That's the discussion we're having now, isn't it? > > I just like to discuss first whether we want it and whether to code > looks good before planning how to integrate it. Right. That's why I started this thread. > > > Some other concerns I have: > > > Is Python available on all platforms we support. > > > > Answer: Yes. We know this from experience with the Python AIs. > > We don't know, since the Python AI can be disabled. It is my understanding that at least one mainline campaign breaks if you do that. So it seems unlikely that anyone is actually doing this, or we'd be getting bug reports about it. > We had some problem with certain people still using Python 2.3 with some > Python AI changes IIRC Blind Oracle wanted to make. Must have been before my time. > > 3.x really is a disruptive change, but 2.x will be maintained and > > supported for the foreseeable future on our target platforms. > > I'm more concerned with us having to maintain two versions of some code > due to incompatibilities. That's a legitimate thing to be worried about. But I don't think it could be worse than what we already cope with routinely for things like GCC-vs.-MSVC differences. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
