Re: C++ and lisp and Games

Some more thoughts on this topic...

In one of Paul Graham's essay about his startup he states that using
lisp gave him an advantage over his competitors. So given that, rather
than say "nobody uses lisp in games therefore I won't", the same spirit
would suggest "well i will write games in lisp, giving my company a
competitive advantage".

So then the Naughty Dog example comes up, and here we can see an
example of a company that wholly embraced lisp and succeeded in making
a huge hit game.

But they had a couple of highly talented, MIT trained, lisp experts,
and you have to ask the question was it lisp that made the difference,
or the team and people that used it?

Without more examples it's hard to say.

A lot of posts on this topic have stated that tools do not work with
lisp which is why professional developers would be unable to change.
Well I'm not so sure about that. DirectX, OpenGL and things like the
Sony and Nintendo library code are all perfectly wrappable given a
suffiently powerful way to interface them. A few weeks work is the most
it would take you do that.

As for external tools like Max and Maya exporters, in a typically 18
month to 2 year project you are going to get time to get your graphics
pipeline exactly how you want it... so in otherwords writing Max and
Maya exporters that will export just right for your system is not going
to be a big deal.

My guess is that some kind of hybrid between a very low level C++ and
game library level system with a lisp system running on top of it would
be the ideal way to go.

The most serious problem with using lisp is that you won't be starting
with expert lisp programmers. There just aren't any waiting around for
game programming jobs. So you need to come up with a way to train them
to be lisp experts, that can write lisp code in a way that will run in
limited memory environments with slow processors.

Naughty Dog's lisp experts built a compiler and a language and no doubt
most of their game systems before they started bringing more people in.


I'm a new lisp programmer, and I've already passed the point where if I
want to write a little program or utility I will instinctively and
quickly write it in lisp. Some of those tools will start to make it
into my workplace, and there may be a gradual infection of those who
are interested.

Justin Heyes-Jones

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