The pedophile-armadillo rears its hoary head in reply.

Pros:

- Python is nominally easier to learn for the complete beginner, as there are several online tutorials and a number of books available. Introductory programming courses are now using Python in the role that BASIC, Pascal, and Logo once filled, simply because it's that easy to learn.

I'm wondering, are most of the folks here who are actually doing stuff with VERGE (i.e. not me) complete beginners, or do they already know some coding. If you already know some C, VC will be really easy to pick up. I've done lots of C programming, and had no trouble with VC (but I'm definitely atypical)

- Python's compilation stage is internal and fast enough to be unnoticeable. This results in faster coding-testing cycles.

This is a genuinely nice feature. Lst time I messed with VC (testing a version of v2.7) it seemed to take longer to compile than I remembered. Then again, it takes half an hour to do a complete build of Xtreme Air Racing, so everything's relative :)

- Python has a number of higher-level abstractions that make it more expressive than VC: object-orientation, first-class functions, untyped variables, garbage collection, and more. These features can eliminate a lot of programming overhead, making programs shorter and faster to write.

OOP is useful, but not the magic bullet people make it out to be. I find it often causes more headaches than it cures. Garbage collection is nice, but VC really shouldn't need dynamic memory allocation in the first place.

- Python is made by other people. It already exists, complete and free of major bugs, and it will continue to be improved and debugged with no effort on VERGE's part.

Good, but in my experience, integrating other peoples' code is often at least as hard as writing your own code.

- Python is more complete than VC. It has more data types, better string- and file-handling libraries, and more development hooks (debuggers, profilers, etc.).

True. Then again, VC is currently (imho) more complex than it really needs to be. I still preferred V1's version, which was strictly for RPG scripting, and not an attempt to be a complete game-development system. Zeux is a wonderful game, but it's not what VERGE was originally designed for, and giving VERGE the capacity to make Zeux takes a language that's necessarily more complex and full-featured (and thus bug-prone) than would be the case for a straightforward RPG-scripting language.

Cons:

- All VERGE code is currently in VC. Porting VC code to Python will be straightforward, but it will be very tedious for long programs. Tutorials and utility code would have to be ported as well.

The biggy. A lot of stuff would have to be unlearned. Newbies might pick up Python more easily, but oldbies who were in the middle of development would have to come to a screeching halt, back up, and drive down the other road.

- Python relies on indentation instead of braces to delineate blocks of code. Thus, Python code may not post well on some BBSs or on IRC (although it posts just fine on the Verge Source BBS).

I'm not by any means an expert on theory of programming languages, but I've studied it a bit, and I'm a bit leery of a parser that doesn't ignore whitespace. Just a personal preference, this.

- Python is big. A switch to Python means that the VERGE distribution will increase at least 500k in size, even more if some of the less-common Python modules are included.

500k's not all that bad, but I see your point.

- Python does not (currently) require you to declare variables. This means that a mistyped variable name can be interpreted as a different variable, and the error will not be caught until the code executes -- i.e. it will not be caught by the compiler. This means, all branches of code must be tested thoroughly. Of course, VC code also should be tested thoroughly, as there are other kinds of bugs besides typos.

Ouch. I HATE programs that try to think for you. This includes trying to figure out what type a variable should be. Variable types, like porn, should be explicit.

- VC has the potential to be faster than Python. I understand that VC is currently slower than Python, but Python is generally slower than other typed scripting languages. Not that it makes much of a difference, since most of VERGE's CPU time is taken by graphics and sound.

Yeah, in my experience, the scripting language is one of the least likely parts of a game to be the slowdown point. VC runs perfectly fine.

- A switch from VC to any other language means that there will a split in the community for at least a short amount of time, since some people will stick with the old version. This doesn't affect any individual's ability to use the engine, but it does limit resources like tutorials or discussions.

I say it does influence an individual's ability to use the engine, if that individual had already spent a good deal of time and effort in learning VC. Admittedly, I'd have to redo Galaxy Destroyer from scratch if I ever wanted to continue it, but I'd rather do it in something that's as close as possible to the language it was originally done in.

- VERGE has always had VC. For some people, VC is the defining feature of VERGE, so switching to Python effectively makes it another engine, one that is "not VERGE". Of course, whether or not this is an issue for you depends on what you think VERGE "is" and how important using an engine called "VERGE" is to you, which strikes me more as philosophy or nostalgia than anything else.

Yeah. I'm a conservative bastard, probably somewhere to the right of Hitler. I don't care for someone changing something as core as the scripting language. Then again, I wasn't too thrilled when I found out that V2 was gonna be more generic and less inherently RPG-related, although I can appreciate the reasoning behind that.

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To be honest, this whole Python thing sounds like just another in the "ooh, that looks cool, I wanna put it in" line. The bumpster reminds me of my boss a bit, in this regard. I have to be careful what I say at work, because if I suggest something as a possible, future improvement to the game, he immediately jumps on it and tells me I must put it in immediately, and that it's even better than everything else I've done. This is nice, and an ego boost, but we need to get the game finished, which means locking down the feature set and working on implementing the current list of must-haves. Whoever develops VERGE, whether it be bumpy or someone else, needs to keep that in mind. It's not just a fun diversion, or an exercise in teaching yourself new programming tricks. It's a product that people are trying to use.

What's too bad is that I could probably finish V2 up pretty quick, but there's just this little thing called Xtreme Air Racing that some of you may have heard of that's eating up too much of my time. That, and bubba in the cell next to me keeps calling me a babyf*cker...really gets on my nerves, that. :)

Anyhow, just my 2 meseta,

Tarkuss!

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The question should not be "will one still use verge if it switches to python," but "does anybody out there actually WANT this switch?" so far I don't see any "yes"s to the second question.

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verge-rpg. it's not just a job, it's an enema.

these boards still lack an edit command and I didn't want to confuse anything by posting beneath it...

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Praetor - Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

I think not. So, go back to whatever rock you climbed out from under.

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- Ear "It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."

Uh, right now I'm going to kick myself and go jump on cyberdude's bandwagon. He must be the guy I was talking about in my post. Let's rally behind him people!

Macadamia - The Nut

PS: Many may demote the inane ramblings of the insane as mere fodder, but what if what they say is true?

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to remain in the analogy: let's not climb the next mountain before we passed the current one.

Get a good version of VC Verge, then move on to Python Verge I'd say..

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-Devlyn