Yet again I've changed my design idea but I believe I have a winner this time. The idea is to write the basic low level things in c/c++ and then use swig to generate a lib so I can use a higher level language to interact with it. This gives me the flexibility to potentially use a lot of different languages but I'd rather focus on only one of them.

The idea of the poll is get a grasp of what people out there are familiar with, what they like and general concerns. Note that speed isn't one of my concerns because I can always write optimized code in c for normal routines if necessary.

Right now I'm leaning towards python for two reasons. One, the syntax is easy to learn/pickup. Two, python is install by default on macs and most linux distros , (I'm sure window has an easy installer as well).

Out of that list I've only played with lua. In my simple tests lua seemed to perform very well and I'd probably use it in my next project that requires scripting.

_________________
Attack of the Meeplings - Free 2D Arcade Shooter
Caverns of Underkeep - Free Browser Based Roguelike

To put my question in context I think the library idea should be posted here as well Design pdf. Feel free to comment on the idea as well.

you should add Haskell to that list...I'd definitely vote for it
That being said, python is pretty sweet

-wyrmmage

_________________
Worlds at War (Current Project) - http://www.awkward-games.com
Ganadu'r, The Eternal Sage (Other Current Project) - http://rpg.naget.com
Programming tutorials and web-design services: http://www.wyrmmage.com

I went with Python because I know what it looks like, and being a crippled imbred spawn of Basic and C, I can at least beat it with my belt until it does as it is told.

Also, I have the Python-equivalent to the Chipmunk Book, so I have enough documentation to debug syntax.

ok but i would choose C++ because i know it =) but thats not on there so i chose lua, which is similar but is for gaming

_________________
This is a signiture.

Ruby, ruby ruby ruby

Out of the lot there, ruby is the only one I've liked enough to learn. Also, ruby comes with mac and most linux distros now as well, and is really simple to install in windows the same as python (possibly easier, thinking back to some issues I've had in the past getting python set up on a windows machine in order to run some python progs).

Oh, and with ruby, you don't have a whitespace-dependant syntax, which I always count as a plus

_________________
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

I can't believe you did that. I don't even know which emoticon to use now.

I only know python and ruby. While the whole whitespace thing in python does really annoy me, i do quite like it. I don't really know ruby enough but some of its sytax annoys me a lot too.

I'd say python

Chances are that the bits of ruby syntax you don't like are easily avoidable One of the things I like about it is that it tries to be as diverse in it's syntax requirements as possible. It can get messy if you don't stick to one style, but then any language can. And it's really nice to have a scripting language that doesn't require semi-colons at the end of every line but also won't throw a spaz if I've just switched from C++ and my semi-colon finger is on auto-pilot

_________________
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

if im correct, the number of dots in the for loop syntax determines if it's inclusive or not? hardly nice.

like i said though, i haven't learned ruby, ive just learned a bit of ruby syntax. I still try to program it like a nicer C and I just ignore all of it's features like how you pass blocks of code as arguments and stuff.

you ignore the features that make it great?

And yeah, although that is range syntax, not for-loop syntax. 2 dots is a half-open range, 3 dots is a closed range (or the other way around). If you don't like it, don't use ranges though. They aren't the only option

_________________
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

Python hates functional programming. Ruby doesn't. Ruby hates performance.

I like ruby (though I'd much prefer my own pet language, which can't even be parsed yet)

_________________
Trying is the first step towards failure
b

ruby does hate performance... that's the one reason I don't use it for more than Rails applications and the occasional script

_________________
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com

I've been reading up on ruby and python (I don't know either of them) and I came up with a few conclusions.

Python seems to be inconsistence syntax wise, they have a weird idea of how self should be implemented and they keep on adding features to replace others make things even more inconstant. Pythons whitespace doesn't bother me too much as it seems to make things cleaner but I'm sure that once I started using it I would get frustrated with it.

Ruby seems very consistent and have more built in language features. The syntax can be odd at time but overall quite nice. The whole everything is an object is good for basic types "hello".length 5.to_s and so forth. From what I've read the runtime seems to have issues but 2.0 is just around the corner and there are a lot of spawns such as JRuby, Ruby.net and Yarv which look promising.

So out of the two I think ruby is higher level and is more suitable for an extension language then python. I just got a book about ruby (The Ruby Way) and plan to learn it now.

Keep in mind while I chose ruby the lib will still work with 17 other languages and of course c/c++ natively. I should have most of the Kore package done by the end of the day as work has been canceled (due to flooding).

With ruby, there is also the pickaxe book, available in first edition online for free, right here:
http://www.rubycentral.com/pickaxe/

Its a good introduction to ruby, although there are a fair few books around for it now (a lot of them concentrate on rails rather than ruby though... ah well )

_________________
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
theraje: 'God doesn't love stupid people, they're just easier to make'
http://sharedillusions.blogspot.com