AdaGames

AdaGames

[Enrico A.]

Ciao! 
    in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
gate) etc ?
Ciao,
    Enrico B.A.

Re: AdaGames

[Erik Sigra]

torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 12.10 skrev du:
> Ciao!
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?

I think Ada would be well suited for the server side of games. They can run 
as daemons and handle the state of the game world. Clients can be connected 
over the network and be written in whatever language is required to use a 
certain GUI toolkit. The only interfaces that the server needs is network and 
file. This is how Freeciv works, except that the server is written in C and 
has a command line interface. At least 1 of the 2 monopoly-like games for KDE 
has a true daemon server design.

I'm sure someone knows of more games that follow this design.


The other use for Ada is AI-clients that connect to servers in the same way 
as GUI-clients.


On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL 
(sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to chose 
from.

Re: AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:29:04 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL 
> (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to chose 
> from.

Why do you want Qt?

Preben

Re: AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

Any game that makes use of multitasking demonstrates a capability of Ada
that is not as easily done in other languages. The problem you have is that
there is no standard GUI for Ada. If you could utilize GtkAda as your GUI,
you'd have some level of portability - which is another advantage of Ada.

In the end, anything that can be programmed in Ada can sooner or later be
programmed in some other language. The end user doesn't see the language, so
it doesn't necessarily demonstrate the power of Ada. The power of Ada is
illustrated in the development process - not the end product. Dream up an
interesting game and build it in Ada and be satisfied that you got the job
done quicker with fewer defects.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Enrico A." <muaddib@digibank.it> wrote in message
news:98104da8.0203280310.143a1c18@posting.google.com...
> Ciao!
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?
> Ciao,
>     Enrico B.A.

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

muaddib@digibank.it (Enrico A.) wrote in message news:<98104da8.0203280310.143a1c18@posting.google.com>...
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?


There's no reason why one couldn't do any or all of the above.

Personally, I'd like to see someone do a FPS, just to show how Ada
gives you high speed in a safe OO language. But if they didn't know
their way around FPS's, they'd be quite likely to show the opposite.

If I can ever get my other projects into maintanence mode, I'd like to
do a game myself. I'd probably pick a strategic game, because they
require the least work, and for me are the most fun. Also, a 2d
strategic game could probably get by with a user interface built with
standard GUI components, and thus could be made portable (although a
3D game could mostly do the same thing using OpenGL). That would show
off another of Ada's advantages.


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[chris.danx]

> On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL
> (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to
chose
> from.

I think David Botton was looking for volunteers to port gwindows to Linux a
while ago, although I'm not entirely sure.  If you want to have an
alternative to gwindows perhaps you could contribute to this effort.


Regards,
Chris

Re: AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 16:00:18 -0000, chris.danx wrote:
> 
> I think David Botton was looking for volunteers to port gwindows to Linux a
> while ago, although I'm not entirely sure.  If you want to have an
> alternative to gwindows perhaps you could contribute to this effort.

But what should be the underlying library one should use? Raw xlib?

Preben

Re: AdaGames

[Erik Sigra]

torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 15.30 skrev du:
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:29:04 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> > On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL
> > (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to
> > chose from.
>
> Why do you want Qt?

Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is required for 
KDE.

Re: AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:47:27 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> 
> Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is required for 
> KDE.

But what has this to do with Ada and graphics? You can use GtkAda
instead. 

-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�

Re: AdaGames

[chris.danx]

"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:p6Ho8.4718$2b4.521758@news11-gui.server.ntli.net...
> > On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL
> > (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to
> chose
> > from.
>
> I think David Botton was looking for volunteers to port gwindows to Linux
a
> while ago, although I'm not entirely sure.  If you want to have an
> alternative to gwindows perhaps you could contribute to this effort.
                           ^

typo... sorry! should be GtkAda.

Re: AdaGames

[Erik Sigra]

torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 18.55 skrev du:
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:47:27 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> > Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is required
> > for KDE.
>
> But what has this to do with Ada and graphics? You can use GtkAda
> instead.

But then it wont be a KDE application.

Re: AdaGames

[Stephen Leake]

Erik Sigra <sigra@home.se> writes:

> torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 18.55 skrev du:
> > On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:47:27 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> > > Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is required
> > > for KDE.
> >
> > But what has this to do with Ada and graphics? You can use GtkAda
> > instead.
> 
> But then it wont be a KDE application.

Long live Gnome!

Sorry, it's been a long day ...

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Erik Sigra <sigra@home.se> wrote in message news:<mailman.1017318303.30612.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> The other use for Ada is AI-clients that connect to servers in the same way 
> as GUI-clients.

I'd think for an AI client application you'd want to use an AI
language; something that can syntacticly handle rule definitions more
easily than a procedural language like Ada, and has a nice built-in
inference engine. Of course, you can always use Ada for the system
software part that AI's aren't as good with. I'm not just whistling
dixie here; I have actually done this exact thing myself. See
http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/Fodderbot/Fodderbot.html .

> On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL 
> (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale. There is only GTKAda to chose 
> from.

First off, bindings aren't all that tough to create. In fact, when
doing Win32 programming I generally make my own, even though canned
ones are freely available. For that reason, I'm generally impatient
with arguments about Ada's inadaquacy centered around lack of
bindings. (However, I do understand that Qt is C++ based which
complicates matters greatly. In fact, that's one of the problems Gtk+
was created to fix.)

Secondly, the vast majority of the game market is in Win32-land. Only
a small (but vocal) minority use other platforms. Only a small
minority of those are using Linux. There are at least 3 different
major GUI systems on Linux (X/Motif, Qt, and Gtk+; 4 if you count
Wine). So arguing that lack of Qt support is going to be a significant
problem for a game developer is just plain silly.

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames (SDL)

[Chad R. Meiners]

"> On the GUI-side it looks worse. No Qt bindings and AdaSDL
> (sourceforge.net/projects/adasdl) looks stale.

Actually the AdaSDL bindings seem to have about everything you would need to
write whatever graphic game you would like.  The only gripe I have is that I
would rather use Ada's tasking model instead of SDL's threading model.  I
figure that I might be able to contribute a thick binding that sit on top of
the thin binding that will let you use Ada's tasking model with peace of
mind.

Re: AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 16:00:18 -0000, chris.danx wrote:

> > I think David Botton was looking for volunteers to port gwindows to Linux a
> > while ago, although I'm not entirely sure.  If you want to have an
> > alternative to gwindows perhaps you could contribute to this effort.

> But what should be the underlying library one should use? Raw xlib?

No, you need to go sideways to that; xlib is X specific, and you are
wasting your time completely if you don't write something that ports
automatically to any windowing system.  The Graphical Kernel System
would be nice, because under it there is surely code to call xlib
available somewhere; xlib becomes just another a device driver from the
GKS point of view.

Java is an alternative, but only once you have full source compiler
technology widely in place to overcome Java's rather horrific
performance problems.

To give you an idea, a huge commercial graphics package (DISPLA and
TELL-A-GRAPH) was ported to GKS (so the president of the company told an
audience of which I was part) by using only the GKS "draw absolute line"
command; it doesn't have to be that big a deal, it is just necessary to
have that standard interface somewhere in your graphics stream to make
portability work.

I've never seen a full PHIGS implementation, so I don't know if the
Programmers' Hierarchical Interface to Graphical Systems died or is
still viable, but GKS and its companion standards are still in use
twenty years later.

xanthian.



-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Enrico A." <muaddib@digibank.it> wrote:

> Ciao! 

>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?

Several years ago by now I promoted porting Nethack to Ada as a way to
attract college students to the Ada language.  The proposal fell on deaf
ears.

I'd like to see the conceptual richness of Nethack ported to a full 3D
graphics live action dungeon crawl game, but it's way past my skill set
to accomplish, or even organize.

xanthian.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Enrico A." <muaddib@digibank.it> wrote:

 > Ciao! 

 >     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
 > a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
 > flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
 > Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
 > gate) etc ?

Several years ago by now I promoted porting Nethack to Ada as a way to
attract college students to the Ada language.  The proposal fell on deaf
ears.

I'd like to see the conceptual richness and widely distributed
development model, both perfect for students, of Nethack ported to a
full 3D graphics live action dungeon crawl game, but it's way past my
skill set to accomplish, or even organize.

xanthian.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 19:48:25 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> But then it wont be a KDE application.

So what? It will be an Ada application. Better than to be assotiated
with some buggy C++ applications (like the office suit of KDE)

-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�

Re: AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:49:21 +0000 (UTC), Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
> 
> No, you need to go sideways to that; xlib is X specific, and you are
> wasting your time completely if you don't write something that ports
> automatically to any windowing system.  The Graphical Kernel System
> would be nice, because under it there is surely code to call xlib
> available somewhere; xlib becomes just another a device driver from the
> GKS point of view.

We are talking about a port to linux from a Windows spesific toolkit.


-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�

Re: AdaGames

[Randy Brukardt]

Kent Paul Dolan wrote in message ...
>Several years ago by now I promoted porting Nethack to Ada as a way to
>attract college students to the Ada language.  The proposal fell on
deaf
>ears.

There is an Ada Hack-like game. One of our new programmers undertook to
write such a thing to get used to programming in Ada. (This was about
1988 or so.) It got reasonably far, it definitely was playable. Indeed,
we wasted quite a bit of time play-testing it! I had to stop it
eventually, because we were paying him to work on compilers and tools,
not Hack!

I've probably got a copy of the source on some floppy (or ancient
computer) around here. The main problem would be that I believe we let
him keep the copyright, so I don't know that I can distribute it.

         Randy.

Re: AdaGames

[Adrian Hoe]

"Enrico A." wrote:
> 
> Ciao!
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?
> Ciao,
>     Enrico B.A.


The power of Ada has been vividly shown in many areas of application
including the aerospace industry. I personally think that Ada is great
for everything including games and whichever games you want them to be
in Ada. My AdaOthello has been a great help to teach Ada and GtkAda at
least in my company, although the game is not "hi-tech" looking.

Why not pick one and start developing? You will find it fun to do and
stick to it. :)
-- 
Remove *nospam* to email.              -- Adrian Hoe
                                       -- http://adrianhoe.com

Re: AdaGames

[Darren New]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Any game that makes use of multitasking demonstrates a capability of Ada
> that is not as easily done in other languages.

Well, not as easily done in other languages that lack tasking features.
Many languages have tasking features built in, tho, as well as standard
GUIs.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: AdaGames

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:48:25 -0600, Erik Sigra wrote:

> torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 18.55 skrev du:
>> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:47:27 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
>> > Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is
>> > required for KDE.
>>
>> But what has this to do with Ada and graphics? You can use GtkAda
>> instead.
> 
> But then it wont be a KDE application.

It should still run under KDE, provided the necessary libraries are
installed.  Unless you want the game to be "integrated" with other
applications the only drawback would be the difference in look and feel.
(Many commercial games have a L&F quite different from the OS they run
on already, and I haven't heard much complaining on that account.)

That said, it would be nice if all the OSS toolkit/WM writers got
together and RFC'd a standard for themes, so that you could specify a
theme for your desktop and have all the components of diverse origin
pick it up and display it reasonably consistently.  (I believe I've
heard that a move is being made in that direction, at least between Gtk*
and KDE, though I haven't been following it very closely.)

Also: would there be any unsurmountable problems to creating Qt/KDE Ada
bindings a la GtkAda?  I know this sort of thing requires a vast amount
of work, but if it appears to be feasible maybe all it would take is
someone to start it, whereafter help could be recruited from others with
like interests.

Finally, I also thought I had heard that someone had some Ada bindings
for the OSS (Lokisoft?) game SDL, which might serve instead of Gtk* or
KDE either.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: AdaGames

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:21:09 -0600, Ted Dennison wrote:

> Erik Sigra <sigra@home.se> wrote in message
> news:<mailman.1017318303.30612.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
>> The other use for Ada is AI-clients that connect to servers in the
>> same way as GUI-clients.
> 
> I'd think for an AI client application you'd want to use an AI
> language; something that can syntacticly handle rule definitions more
> easily than a procedural language like Ada, and has a nice built-in
> inference engine. Of course, you can always use Ada for the system
> software part that AI's aren't as good with. I'm not just whistling
> dixie here; I have actually done this exact thing myself. See
> http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/Fodderbot/Fodderbot.html .

If you want to try writing your AI in Scheme rather than Lisp, I have
Ada bindings for GUILE at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/bdbryant/guile-for-ada/index.html,
licensed as GPL + standard exeption for instantiations.

The bindings aren't complete, and I haven't tried any AI or even
heavy-duty scripting, but I do use the bindings regularly for loading
data in Scheme syntax into my Ada programs, and I have done some simple
application scripting with it.  I would probably be trying it out for
game AI right now, if not so busy with other matters.


Also, for non-traditional "AI" such as neural networks and genetic
algorithms, I have had very good luck with Ada.  Right now I have a
super-simple AI working for a super-simple game using these methods, all
in Ada.  (It's starting to look like I will be writing a dissertation on
that topic, and I will most certainly do everything in Ada and Scheme.)

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: AdaGames

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 09:13:08 -0600, Ted Dennison wrote:

> If I can ever get my other projects into maintanence mode, I'd like to
> do a game myself. I'd probably pick a strategic game, because they
> require the least work, and for me are the most fun.

If you ever do that and want to make a team project of it, be sure to
announce it here.  I also have interests in that direction...

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: AdaGames

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 05:10:15 -0600, Enrico A. wrote:

> Ciao!
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?

IMO Ada would be useful for a wide variety of games (for exactly the
same reason it's useful for other stuff), and games are probably the
best domain for "advocacy" projects if you are trying to get people
interested in Ada, OSS, or whatever.

Probably picking a genre on the basis of what game *you* would like to
have is the best strategy for answering your question.  Think of a game
you've played and liked but always found yourself saying "this would be
lots better if you could do XYZ", and implement a version with XYZ.
That will help motivate you to keep perfecting the game even after
you've got the basic system working.

Good luck,

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message news:<fa07dbfec5dad2d0a41625ebfeda3720.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>...
> Several years ago by now I promoted porting Nethack to Ada as a way to
> attract college students to the Ada language.  The proposal fell on deaf
> ears.

As Nethack is fairly simple, its probably something a single person
could handle. So rather than "promoting" it, why not just do it
yourself?

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

Some languages are providing class libraries that let you create "active
objects" which certainly helps with multitasking. I don't know of any other
languages that have tasking built in as direct syntactic features of the
language. (I might be wrong - but at least for the biggies like C++ & Java,
I believe this is the case.) While I admit I don't know much about the
active objects that may be supplied with C++ or Java, my understanding from
other people is that you still need to do some work to control the
communication & synchronization between the tasks.

In general, I think it would be easier to do a multi-tasking application in
Ada than in most other languages. Not that you *can't* do it in C or C++ or
Java - just that because of the direct language support, you get a leg-up on
it.

Now the "standard GUI" part is another story. AFAIK, C++ doesn't have a
"standard" GUI, but Java sort of does by virtue of its class libraries. Here
you might get an edge that buys back any loss for dealing with tasking.
That's a big reason to prefer another language over Ada - and one reason why
Ada ought to define some collection of libraries as a "standard". (Ada could
have an edge here - coming along second with a class library means you get
to learn what works well and what sucks about everyone else's libraries,
right?)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Darren New" <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CA3CE3A.FA587CCD@san.rr.com...
>
> Well, not as easily done in other languages that lack tasking features.
> Many languages have tasking features built in, tho, as well as standard
> GUIs.
>

Re: AdaGames

[Wes Groleau]

> If you want to try writing your AI in Scheme rather than Lisp, I have
> Ada bindings for GUILE at
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/bdbryant/guile-for-ada/index.html,
> licensed as GPL + standard exeption for instantiations.

It would be great (maybe you already did) to keep
a couple of the big Ada web sites notified of this URI
and any major updates.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message news:<a814md$i93$1@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>...
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:21:09 -0600, Ted Dennison wrote:
> > I'd think for an AI client application you'd want to use an AI
> > language; something that can syntacticly handle rule definitions more
> > easily than a procedural language like Ada, and has a nice built-in
> > inference engine. Of course, you can always use Ada for the system
> > software part that AI's aren't as good with. I'm not just whistling
> > dixie here; I have actually done this exact thing myself. See
> > http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/Fodderbot/Fodderbot.html .
> 
> If you want to try writing your AI in Scheme rather than Lisp, I have

Actually, it wasn't written in Lisp. I used CLIPS, which is a
public-domain (forward?-chaining) rule-based expert system language
and inference engine. At one point, I think there was even an Ada(83)
implementation of CLIPS. Unfortunately, the C version has been the one
that people have been maintaining, so I think the Ada version is a bit
of a dead letter at this point.

> Ada bindings for GUILE at
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/bdbryant/guile-for-ada/index.html,
> licensed as GPL + standard exeption for instantiations.

Cool. I did something quite similar for CLIPS, which is available at
http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/AdaClips/AdaClips.html .

> Also, for non-traditional "AI" such as neural networks and genetic

I don't know about "non-traditional". Those have been topics in every
AI course I've ever seen. I'm told that load balancing used to be
considered "AI" too, several decades ago. My CS1&2 instructor at
Tulane used to half-jokingly define AI as "anything that's hard". :-)

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message news:<ua778vr7c0s76b@corp.supernews.com>...
> I've probably got a copy of the source on some floppy (or ancient
> computer) around here. The main problem would be that I believe we let
> him keep the copyright, so I don't know that I can distribute it.

That's only a big problem if you don't know how/where to get hold of
him now. Presumably, that is the case as well?


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message news:<ua778vr7c0s76b@corp.supernews.com>...
> There is an Ada Hack-like game. One of our new programmers undertook to
> write such a thing to get used to programming in Ada. (This was about
> 1988 or so.) It got reasonably far, it definitely was playable. Indeed,
> we wasted quite a bit of time play-testing it! I had to stop it
> eventually, because we were paying him to work on compilers and tools,
> not Hack!

Now that I think about it, I went through almost the exact same
experience when I was learning Ada. The program I wrote was called
"Goons". It wasn't nearly as sophisticated as hack, though. It was
sort of like a turn-based version of "Robotron", but without any guns.
You had to get the attacking robots to either crash into each other,
or into barriers. It used the VMS SMG library for screen output, so it
would work on any terminal that could log into a Vax. At one point I
was getting official DR's submitted against it. :-)

Once we moved into the detailed design phase, there really wasn't time
to work on it any more (and I was getting my coding "fix" by doing my
normal work). I have no clue what, if anything, ever happened to it.


-- 
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Re: AdaGames

[Pascal Obry]

muaddib@digibank.it (Enrico A.) writes:

> Ciao! 
>     in your opinion what kind of game can show the power of Ada ?
> a sport game (soccer, nhl), strategic game (like command&conquer),
> flight (Ace combat,Ms flight simulator), rps (Doom, Quake, Halo),
> Adventure (Zak McKracken:))), Day of the tentacle), rpg (Baldur's
> gate) etc ?
> Ciao,
>     Enrico B.A.

If you are willing to learn the distributed annex, for sure a distributed game
will be a very nice Ada power's demonstrator. If you want to learn more,
download GNAT (free), GLADE (free) and have a look at the demo... Now it's up
to you to build the more entertaining game :)

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: AdaGames

[Erik Sigra]

Hi, what's happening with Yasfync?

fredagen den 29 mars 2002 08.10 skrev du:
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:48:25 -0600, Erik Sigra wrote:
> > torsdagen den 28 mars 2002 18.55 skrev du:
> >> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:47:27 +0100, Erik Sigra wrote:
> >> > Because it has many useful widgets and other features. And it is
> >> > required for KDE.
> >>
> >> But what has this to do with Ada and graphics? You can use GtkAda
> >> instead.
> >
> > But then it wont be a KDE application.
>
> It should still run under KDE, provided the necessary libraries are
> installed.  Unless you want the game to be "integrated" with other
> applications the only drawback would be the difference in look and feel.
> (Many commercial games have a L&F quite different from the OS they run
> on already, and I haven't heard much complaining on that account.)

Of course I want the integration. The user should get the file dialog as 
usual. The scrollbars should look and behave as he has configured it. Toolbar 
icons and menu fonts should be the size he wants them. Menu colors should be 
the usual. ...


> Also: would there be any unsurmountable problems to creating Qt/KDE Ada
> bindings a la GtkAda?  I know this sort of thing requires a vast amount
> of work, but if it appears to be feasible maybe all it would take is
> someone to start it, whereafter help could be recruited from others with
> like interests.

Probably not since there is a binding framework that can output bindings for 
C, Java, Perl, Python, Objective-C and lately even C#.


> Finally, I also thought I had heard that someone had some Ada bindings
> for the OSS (Lokisoft?) game SDL, which might serve instead of Gtk* or
> KDE either.

SDL is not made for desktop integration. I don't know if it can use the 
standard file dialog. I also don't know if it works with Xinerama. Users with 
2 monitors will probably want to have the main map maximized on 1 monitor, 
maybe a city/diplomacy/research/station/train/industry/stock/finance/whatever 
dialog and some statistics on the other monitor. Even people with only 1 
monitor may not want to sacrifice the flexibility of the window manager.

Re: AdaGames

[Darren New]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> I don't know of any other
> languages that have tasking built in as direct syntactic features of the
> language. 

Err, as I said, Tcl and Java spring to mind, for example. Probably
Python too. Eiffel, if it ever actually got implemented that way.
Hermes. NIL. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "direct syntactic features". I'd count
pretty much anything that's a defined part of the language, regardless
of whether it happens to use the same syntax as other parts of the
language. If I can count on the language providing threads even when the
underlying OS doesn't, I'd call that part of the language, wouldn't you?
Java certainly has reserved words for managing synchronization, and
Tcl's syntax is such that you don't really distinguish stuff based on
syntax (e.g., "if" is as much a procedure as "create_thread" is).

> active objects that may be supplied with C++ or Java, my understanding from
> other people is that you still need to do some work to control the
> communication & synchronization between the tasks.

The same as you do in Ada. In Tcl, it's even easier. As it is in Hermes.
(As an example, Hermes doesn't even *have* procedure calls. *All* it has
is task entries.)

Java has "synchronized" classes, which are pretty much exactly like
protected objects.

Tcl has an event model (in addition to threads) that let you write
things like servers that would normally be multithreaded without needing
threads. I've written a multiplayer network game hosted by a server with
a client doing its own animation and sound effects, and it was
straightforward without needing any threads.
 
> In general, I think it would be easier to do a multi-tasking application in
> Ada than in most other languages. 

Agreed. Ada's tasking is nice. It's just not anything particularly
special, until you get into the real-time stuff.

> Now the "standard GUI" part is another story. AFAIK, C++ doesn't have a
> "standard" GUI, but Java sort of does by virtue of its class libraries.

As does Tcl. Good enough to be ported to a multitude of other languages.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 29 Mar 2002 06:13:44 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
wrote:
>As Nethack is fairly simple, its probably something a single person
>could handle.

"Fairly simple" as Ada projects go, certainly (< 200K SLOCs).
Certainly is not simple as a Roguelike, in both meanings: it is not
small, and it is not a simple game.

Anyway I think it would be better to start a rogue from scratch in Ada
that try to port NetHack. I've been wishing to find the time to do it
(develop a new rogue in Ada, I mean) for years... :(

                                                               /Lektu

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message news:<3CA51876.58FCFA50@san.rr.com>...
> Marin David Condic wrote:
> > I don't know of any other
> > languages that have tasking built in as direct syntactic features of the
> > language. 
> 
> Err, as I said, Tcl and Java spring to mind, for example. Probably
> Python too. Eiffel, if it ever actually got implemented that way.
> Hermes. NIL. 

Its appropriate that I'm reading this on April 1. :-) Serious game
programmers value speed far too highly to even consider using a
scripting language like TCL. Java would be more workable, but still
has a reputation for sloth that would have to be overcome.

The only other language I've ever seen that I'd count as suitable for
game development that has decent built-in multithreading is Concurrent
C. However, Concurrent C is even more under the radar than Ada, and to
my knowledge has no high-quality free compilers available and no
support for Windows (where most of the gaming action is).

-- 
T.E.D.
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Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<6g4gaugv9a85i56kvgcgmu4h2jkjprutec@4ax.com>...
> On 29 Mar 2002 06:13:44 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
> wrote:
> >As Nethack is fairly simple, its probably something a single person
> >could handle.
> 
> "Fairly simple" as Ada projects go, certainly (< 200K SLOCs).
> Certainly is not simple as a Roguelike, in both meanings: it is not
> small, and it is not a simple game.

Seeing as I had a version running on a 256K Amiga 17 years ago, I'd
say *considerably* less than 200K SLOCS.

Also "farily simple" compared to its spiritual successor today,
DiabloII.

It would certainly be very little work to get a basic rev of it up and
running, which is what one needs to get a Free Software project
rolling.

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Darren New]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> Its appropriate that I'm reading this on April 1. :-) Serious game
> programmers value speed far too highly to even consider using a
> scripting language like TCL.

Kind of depends what kind of game you're talking about, doesn't it?
Sure, going for a quake-3 1st person twitch shooter, you need something
fast. Going for something like "Battle Chess" perhaps (animated chess,
e.g., the chess game R2D2 played against Chewbacca or the chess game
seen in Harry Potter) works just fine in a pure scripting language. I
suspect there's things I can do in a scripting language that would
outrun the arcade machines of 15 years ago. The "most popular computer
game ever sold" (Myst) is apparently written in Hypercard, the old
macintosh scripting language. (Or so I'm told. It's certainly not hard
to do.)

If you want to try my pure-Tcl game, I can fire up the server. ;-)

> Java would be more workable, but still
> has a reputation for sloth that would have to be overcome.

Methinks you've never actually tried either to see if it would work.
Methinks you're basing this on reviews written by people who were trying
to prove their language is better who didn't really know the language
they're bashing.
 
-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ralph Moeritz]

Juanma Barranquero wrote:
 
> Anyway I think it would be better to start a rogue from scratch in
> Ada that try to port NetHack. I've been wishing to find the time to
> do it (develop a new rogue in Ada, I mean) for years... :(

I was going to write a roguelike in Ada, I think it's the most 
convenient language. I decided on C instead though because there wasn't 
any source code to learn from in Ada.

-- 
Ralph Moeritz

Re: AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message news:<3CA891B7.80873820@san.rr.com>...
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> > programmers value speed far too highly to even consider using a
> > scripting language like TCL.
> 
> Kind of depends what kind of game you're talking about, doesn't it?
...
> > Java would be more workable, but still
> > has a reputation for sloth that would have to be overcome.
> 
> Methinks you've never actually tried either to see if it would work.

First off, I wasn't saying that Java is too slow. I was saying that
its *reputation* for slowness would be an obstacle for its acceptance
among speed-obsessed game programmers. I never said I agreed with that
reputation, just that its the case. Ada has different but equivalent
unearned reputation problems to live down.

Secondly, it turns out that youthinks wrong, because I *have* actually
tried writing simple games in both. I happen to be a bit of a fan of
both languages.


-- 
T.E.D.
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Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Darren New]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> First off, I wasn't saying that Java is too slow. I was saying that
> its *reputation* for slowness would be an obstacle for its acceptance
> among speed-obsessed game programmers. I never said I agreed with that
> reputation, just that its the case. Ada has different but equivalent
> unearned reputation problems to live down.

My apologies. I read that as the sloth needing to be overcome, rather
than its reputation.
 
> Secondly, it turns out that youthinks wrong, because I *have* actually
> tried writing simple games in both. I happen to be a bit of a fan of
> both languages.

That makes sense, if you're speaking of the reputation rather than the
reality, yes. :-)

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: AdaGames

[Randy Brukardt]

Ted Dennison wrote in message
<4519e058.0203290653.71501f63@posting.google.com>...
>"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:<ua778vr7c0s76b@corp.supernews.com>...
>> I've probably got a copy of the source on some floppy (or ancient
>> computer) around here. The main problem would be that I believe we
let
>> him keep the copyright, so I don't know that I can distribute it.
>
>That's only a big problem if you don't know how/where to get hold of
>him now. Presumably, that is the case as well?


Right. I only hear from former employees when they need a reference. :-)

I just made a quick search for it here, and didn't find it. But it would
have helped to remember the name of the program...

                Randy.

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 1 Apr 2002 07:04:08 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
wrote:

>Seeing as I had a version running on a 256K Amiga 17 years ago, I'd
>say *considerably* less than 200K SLOCS.

I haven't got that line count out of thin air. I used "wc -l" on the
sources, and I didn't count the source of all ports, only /src,
/include and the Windows-specific directories (and only of .c and .h
files, not auxiliary ones). Rest assured current NetHack is not as
lightweight as the Rogue/Hack/NetHack releases of 17 years ago...
Pre-build binaries' sizes are: Non-windowing, 1728 KB; windowing, 2052
KB.

>Also "farily simple" compared to its spiritual successor today,
>DiabloII.

On the contrary: gamers who routinely play Diablo/DiabloII *and*
NetHack are usually pretty clear in stating that NetHack is a lot more
complex and interesting. Obviously, is not as visually appealing as
those two, but gameplay is more developed.

>It would certainly be very little work to get a basic rev of it up and
>running, which is what one needs to get a Free Software project
>rolling.

Not that I want to start any kind of flame war here, but I think
you're *not* talking about the current state of development of
NetHack. Porting the 3.4.0 NetHack (straight from www.nethack.org) to
Ada is not "very little work" for any practical definition of the
words. I don't know what do you mean by "a basic rev of it", because
even simplifying NetHack would be a daunting task right now.

                                                         /Lektu

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 1 Apr 2002 18:05:19 GMT, Ralph Moeritz <ralph@work.co.za> wrote:

>I decided on C instead though because there wasn't 
>any source code to learn from in Ada.

Oh, well, if I get someday to start mine I won't use any previous
source code to learn, I want to make my own mistakes ;)

Moreover, most roguelike sources are reportedly very confusing and
excedingly short on comments. The exception is Moria, but I don't like
Moria-like rogues :(

                                                               /Lektu

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 11:27:52 +0200, Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> On 1 Apr 2002 07:04:08 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
> wrote:
> 
>>Seeing as I had a version running on a 256K Amiga 17 years ago, I'd
>>say *considerably* less than 200K SLOCS.
> 
> I haven't got that line count out of thin air. I used "wc -l" on the
> sources, and I didn't count the source of all ports, only /src,
> /include and the Windows-specific directories (and only of .c and .h
> files, not auxiliary ones). Rest assured current NetHack is not as
> lightweight as the Rogue/Hack/NetHack releases of 17 years ago...
> Pre-build binaries' sizes are: Non-windowing, 1728 KB; windowing, 2052
> KB.

Did you find the source here? 
http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=nethack

-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<entiau0hu5ood9gtg5hkfds6vbtnut1qjk@4ax.com>...
> On 1 Apr 2002 07:04:08 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
> wrote:
> 
> >Seeing as I had a version running on a 256K Amiga 17 years ago, I'd
> >say *considerably* less than 200K SLOCS.
> 
> I haven't got that line count out of thin air. I used "wc -l" on the
> sources, and I didn't count the source of all ports, only /src,

Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"
just counts newlines, which adds loads of whitespace and comment lines
to the count. Perhaps for a typical C program (and nethack in
particular) it won't make much difference. But for my typical Ada
program, the "wc" method would more than double the count (I'm usually
at about %50 comments, and that doesn't even count the blank lines.)

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:

> > No, you need to go sideways to that; xlib is X specific, and you are
> > wasting your time completely if you don't write something that ports
> > automatically to any windowing system.

> We are talking about a port to linux from a Windows spesific toolkit.

Exactly, and having learned once how painful it is to have something to
port that is not written to a device/OS/programming language independent
standard, why not learn from the experience rather than repeat the
previous implementation's error?

xanthian.



-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Nethack (again)!: AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

> and games are probably the
> best domain for "advocacy" projects if you are trying to get people
> interested in Ada, OSS, or whatever.

Agreed, emphatically.

> Think of a game
> you've played and liked but always found yourself saying "this would be
> lots better if you could do XYZ", and implement a version with XYZ.

Beware of getting sucked into this like a sailor into the Maelstrom,
though.

My little attempt to "put 'xyz'" into Scott Robert Ladd's Traveller
applet (somewhere under http://www.coyotegulch.com), passed 800,000
bytes of (Java) source code recently, with no obvious stopping point in
sight.

[I'm trying to force myself to stop adding source momentarily and clean
up the docs again so I can post release epsilon to
http://www.well.com/user/xanthian/java/TravellerDoc.html where the prior
version is sitting now; so far I have added the needed text for all the
interface and code changes, and rearranged text to match interface
rearrangements, but not yet proofread it or checked it for
completeness. Even the docs page is a substantial fraction of a MibiByte
these days.]

His single window applet has become one with 5 main windows and dozens
of pop up ones, his five (later six) possible checkbox choices are my
50, et cetera ad obsessivium.  (I made that word up, trust me.)

As the thread followup to my Nethack! mod of this thread shows, there is
interest, there are bodies interested who have begun such a project in
the past, there is a _huge_ underestimate of how hard such a project
would be (Nethack, long, long ago, had over 100 contributors of code,
all of whose styles one would have to learn to read and understand,
I'm sure it is much worse now, and one is, after all, porting C, a
write-only programming language),  there is an agreement that it would
make a good "advocacy" project for sucking students into the Ada orbit,
and there is a mention of the obvious, that without example code,
programmers given a choice of languages turn to one where example code
exists (much as for my Traveller rewrite, which I began with a total
prior Java experience of one _line_ of Java code written).

Now, can we get a few Teachers Of Ada to commit to forming a
multi-university "distributed programming in the large" project to
reimplement NetHack in Ada?  A useful target enhancement would be to
make it a multi-player game across network servers (at which point
higher education planet-wide would probably come to a grinding halt, but
that's why usage metering for students exists).

After a semester or two, the project would probably maintain itself.
After a substantial body of Nethack-in-Ada source code is created,
subsequent co-authors can program by example.  That makes this a
wonderful place to teach the art of writing maintainable code.

Putting some fun into coursework would be a fine way to get students
really obsessed with Ada.

xanthian.




-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Tue, 2 Apr 2002 14:54:23 +0000 (UTC), Preben Randhol
<randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:

>Did you find the source here? 
>http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=nethack

From NetHack 3.4.0? I did find it on www.nethack.org.

                                               /Lektu

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2 Apr 2002 10:30:14 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
wrote:

>Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"
>just counts newlines, which adds loads of whitespace and comment lines
>to the count.

<sigh> I somewhat suspected this was going to end in a discussion
about the line-counting method used... Using yours, no doubt more
accurate, they're still about 85K.

>But for my typical Ada
>program, the "wc" method would more than double the count (I'm usually
>at about %50 comments, and that doesn't even count the blank lines.)

Well, your original argument was that porting NetHack to Ada was easy,
and even if the sources are 85K SLOCs it is still a very large project
for just one programmer to undertake as a hobby. I think you're
severily underestimating NetHack's size and complexity.

                                                               /Lektu

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On 2 Apr 2002 10:30:14 -0800, Ted Dennison wrote:
> Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<entiau0hu5ood9gtg5hkfds6vbtnut1qjk@4ax.com>...
> 
> Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"

shouldn't it be: grep -ce ";$" so you don't get all the semicolons in
the definitions of functions/procedures?

-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<d59lauoth400po2r2ketc02mcms91bbk61@4ax.com>...
> On 2 Apr 2002 10:30:14 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
> wrote:
> 
> >Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"
> >just counts newlines, which adds loads of whitespace and comment lines
> >to the count.
> 
> <sigh> I somewhat suspected this was going to end in a discussion
> about the line-counting method used... Using yours, no doubt more

I know. I wouldn't have brought it up, except that:
o  An intellectually dishonest person (*not* you of course) could
hardly have found a better way to create themselves huge SLOC counts.
Since you were honest enough to report your method, I figured you'd
care about such perceptions.
o  If that is how you are counting, I have no clue what your numbers
mean, because they bear no relation to numbers I am used to looking
at.

> Well, your original argument was that porting NetHack to Ada was easy,
> and even if the sources are 85K SLOCs it is still a very large project
> for just one programmer to undertake as a hobby. I think you're
> severily underestimating NetHack's size and complexity.

Looking over this thread, I suspect we are talking about two different
things. I won't argue that hand-porting all the existing C code for
the current version of nethack would be a lot of work. However, making
a simple hack-like game that runs would be fairly easy. The way
OpenSource (Bazaar) projects work (I'm using the ESR terminology,
because he's the one who came up with the Cathedral & Bazaar theory),
you don't try to do the whole thing in one go (Cathedral-style). You
make something small that is interesting and runs, release it, then
incrementally improve it. The better it gets, the more people who use
it. The more people who use it, the more who will want to help improve
it. The more it gets improved, the more people use it. etc. So
ideally, things snowball on their own from a relatively small initial
individual investment.

Sure, this process won't net you *the* Nethack. But trying to
hand-port it won't either. By the time you could get done with it, the
C codebase would have moved on.


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

And, of course, why bother? A C program translated directly into Ada doesn't
really buy you much. Its still the same program with the same features. What
is more interesting is to examine what the program does and possibly utilize
that as a basis for developing a new & more interesting program.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204030706.7bd0ed6c@posting.google.com...
>
> Sure, this process won't net you *the* Nethack. But trying to
> hand-port it won't either. By the time you could get done with it, the
> C codebase would have moved on.
>

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message news:<slrnaaljn7.22e.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>...
> On 2 Apr 2002 10:30:14 -0800, Ted Dennison wrote:
> > Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<entiau0hu5ood9gtg5hkfds6vbtnut1qjk@4ax.com>...
> > 
> > Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"
> 
> shouldn't it be: grep -ce ";$" so you don't get all the semicolons in
> the definitions of functions/procedures?

For me no, for two reasons:

  1) It can be argued that defining the interface elemets for
subprograms is work on the same scale as any other ";"-ed line.
  2) ";$" (semi's at the end of the line, for those who don't speak
sed) doesn't get rid of them all anyway. In my code, it wouldn't be
likely to get rid of *any*, as I always put only one formal parameter
definition on a line.
  3) "-c" only counts the *lines* where it appears, not the number of
appearances. Thus even if ";$" *did* skip some single-line parameter
definitions, the resulting count would end up nearly the same.

Generally, I think SLOC is a stupid metric, so tons of effort should
*not* be spent in calculating it or figuring out the perfect way to
calculate it. For that reason, I wouldn't really blink at someone who
uses your method, or most any other method. But methods that count
both comments *and* blank lines are just a bit *too* slack. :-)

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

I once ran a comparison between raw SLOC, semicolons and Halstead bits on a
large body of Ada code. The correlation between them was so close as to make
the method of counting pretty much irrelavent. The secret is to pick your
metric and then be *consistent* in applying it and use it only in monitoring
internal things within a project. ("SLOCs modified in this release", for
example)

You can't really use any of them to compare what goes on in one
language/project with another anyway. The best it tells you is some gross
level of difference between the size of one thing and another. You might be
able to say "This project has a whole lot more code to look at than that
project" and that's about the extent of its relevance.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204030750.78a30287@posting.google.com...
>
> Generally, I think SLOC is a stupid metric, so tons of effort should
> *not* be spent in calculating it or figuring out the perfect way to
> calculate it. For that reason, I wouldn't really blink at someone who
> uses your method, or most any other method. But methods that count
> both comments *and* blank lines are just a bit *too* slack. :-)
>

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 09:50:45 -0600, Ted Dennison wrote:

>   2) ";$" (semi's at the end of the line, for those who don't speak
> sed) doesn't get rid of them all anyway. In my code, it wouldn't be
> likely to get rid of *any*, as I always put only one formal parameter
> definition on a line.

Also, it misses ;s that are followed by comments.


Somewhere along the way I picked up a perl script by one Christopher
Moore, which reports (pseudo) SLOC, comment lines, blank lines, the
total, and the number of subrountines.  If you give it a wildcard
argument it reports those counts per-sourcefile and totals them at the
bottom.

A Web search turns it up at Adapower,
http://www.adapower.com/reuse/sloc.html, though I use a minorly hacked
version that reports in nice on-screen columns rather than as a
comma-delimeted list.

FWIW, I like to count comment lines as well as lines of code, since they
represent a commitment of effort toward the solution of the problem.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Jean-Pierre Rosen]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 743 bytes --]


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> a �crit dans le message news:
> Generally, I think SLOC is a stupid metric, so tons of effort should
> *not* be spent in calculating it or figuring out the perfect way to
> calculate it. For that reason, I wouldn't really blink at someone who
> uses your method, or most any other method. But methods that count
> both comments *and* blank lines are just a bit *too* slack. :-)
>
Depends why you are counting...
For example, when doing a code review, I certainly count (and charge) for comment lines.
They often take longer to review than code...

--
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[tmoran]

> A C program translated directly into Ada doesn't really buy you much.
  Attempting the translation will often show up errors in the C program.

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote:

> And, of course, why bother? A C program translated directly into Ada doesn't
> really buy you much. Its still the same program with the same features. What
> is more interesting is to examine what the program does and possibly utilize
> that as a basis for developing a new & more interesting program.

Which misses the point by a barn-width.  The goal is to imitate the
success cheesy text-graphics games (see also Empire) had in attracting
lots of the best and brightest programmers to choose to program in C,
back when Pascal was a lot easier to comprehend, and was the teaching
langauge of choice.

So _precisely_ re-implementing all the current intellectual endeavor
invested in Nethack is a fine way to re-implement what we really want to
re-implement -- an enthusiasm attractor.  The content doesn't matter
except that Nethack has already proved its worth and trying to reinvent
whatever made Nethack _work_ as an enthusiasm attractor is arguably a
much harder intellectual chore than "merely" re-implementing Nethack.

xanthian.

Since porting to Ada would put Nethack into a language where the kind of
generics invented in Nethack are naturally implemented as a part of the
language instead of welded into place with ad hoc structures and
concepts, for example, making new, glitzy, ego-satisfying extensions by
students doable by students with a wider range of abilities.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"tmoran" <tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:rPQq8.1214$UW.702270680@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

> > A C program translated directly into Ada doesn't really buy you much.
>   Attempting the translation will often show up errors in the C program.

From reading though the code, what, a dozen years or more ago, inventing
Ada-fied ways to do some of the incredibly slick stuff C programmer
students invented for a language with fairly primitive programming
tools, and reimplementing them flawlessly in a pointerless language, is
going to force you to get thoroughly into bed with Ada, too.

xanthian.



-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 3 Apr 2002 07:06:34 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
wrote:

>Since you were honest enough to report your method, I figured you'd
>care about such perceptions.

Yes. I was lazy in my initial count, but that was because I didn't
think important if the result were 100K or 200K or whatever. I just
wanted to show that NetHack is not a "hack" of a few thousand lines,
easy to port to another language as a student project.

>o  If that is how you are counting, I have no clue what your numbers
>mean, because they bear no relation to numbers I am used to looking
>at.

As I've said, using your method count is about 85K.

>Looking over this thread, I suspect we are talking about two different
>things. I won't argue that hand-porting all the existing C code for
>the current version of nethack would be a lot of work. However, making
>a simple hack-like game that runs would be fairly easy.

Well, we violently agree here. What prompted me to intervene in this
conversation was precisely that:

>> Several years ago by now I promoted porting Nethack to Ada as a way to
>> attract college students to the Ada language.  The proposal fell on deaf
>> ears.
>
>As Nethack is fairly simple, its probably something a single person
>could handle. So rather than "promoting" it, why not just do it
>yourself?

So I expect you can see how I understood that you were saying that
porting NetHack (not writing a Rogue/NetHack clone) to Ada was simple.
Now I see you're really saying that writing an Ada rogue would be
easy, or at least interesting. I think the same. Quoting from my first
message:

>Anyway I think it would be better to start a rogue from scratch in Ada
>that try to port NetHack. I've been wishing to find the time to do it
>(develop a new rogue in Ada, I mean) for years... :(

(Sorry for the self-quoting).

So now the only thing lacking is volunteers to write the FARG
(Full-Ada Roguelike Game) :)

                                                                /Lektu

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

And, as I will attempt to observe again, none of this gets you a program
that is somehow or other substantially different from the original. :-)
Someone might do it as a learning exercise - but I could think of more
productive learning exercises. Someone might clean up some bugs along the
way - but will probably introduce new ones in the process. I just don't see
a lot of food-value in translating an existing program into another
language - unless, possibly, that other language no longer has a compiler
for current technology and you need a translation to something else just to
be able to compile it. (But that seems a bit of a stretch. How frequently
does that happen?)

Anyway, I'll suggest that its a *better* idea to look at something like
Nethack and implement a whole new program that perhaps is "inspired" by its
predecessor but does something new and different. A "Nethack in Ada" is not
likely to set either the Nethack or Ada world afire with newfound enthusiasm
and excitement. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:598d46834b4ac2b4bffabdacf5ced656.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "tmoran" <tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:rPQq8.1214$UW.702270680@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
>
> > > A C program translated directly into Ada doesn't really buy you much.
> >   Attempting the translation will often show up errors in the C program.
>
> From reading though the code, what, a dozen years or more ago, inventing
> Ada-fied ways to do some of the incredibly slick stuff C programmer
> students invented for a language with fairly primitive programming
> tools, and reimplementing them flawlessly in a pointerless language, is
> going to force you to get thoroughly into bed with Ada, too.
>

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message news:<a8fd1v$jev$1@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>...
> Somewhere along the way I picked up a perl script by one Christopher
> Moore, which reports (pseudo) SLOC, comment lines, blank lines, the
> total, and the number of subrountines.  If you give it a wildcard
> argument it reports those counts per-sourcefile and totals them at the
> bottom.

There's also a SLOC counter program written in Ada in OpenToken
(http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/OpenToken/OpenToken.html ) that
gives a similar breakdown. Generally I'd just use grep -c ";" because
its easy to do and easy to remember and tell other people to do. But
I've had managers who insist on some snazzy tool, and that fits the
bill nicely.


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

If you really believe that all the Nethack enthusiasts will jump on board
the Ada wagon because their favorite game is now translated into Ada, I
wouldn't try to stop you from doing the translation. Its your time and
energy, after all. I'd just suggest that "new", "different", "improved" and
so on, are better marketing tools. Investing time and energy and creative
talent on "new and improved" seems like a better idea to me. "Been there.
Done that. Got the t-shirt." is my gut reaction to translating a program
from one language to another. Maybe other people have a different view, but
I'd suggest that this has yet to be demonstrated.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:5e5278f0957b5b5b7dbff004eb0704cf.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> Which misses the point by a barn-width.  The goal is to imitate the
> success cheesy text-graphics games (see also Empire) had in attracting
> lots of the best and brightest programmers to choose to program in C,
> back when Pascal was a lot easier to comprehend, and was the teaching
> langauge of choice.
>

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Wes Groleau]

> I once ran a comparison between raw SLOC, semicolons and Halstead bits on a
> large body of Ada code. The correlation between them was so close as to make
> the method of counting pretty much irrelavent. The secret is to pick your

This is true as long as the programmers were not
thinking that there would be any reward or punishment
for a higher or lower count.  Take a well-written
module of a reasonable size in any language, and there
are usually ways to greatly change the metric without
changing behavior.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Preben Randhol]

On 3 Apr 2002 07:50:45 -0800, Ted Dennison wrote:
> Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message news:<slrnaaljn7.22e.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>...
>> On 2 Apr 2002 10:30:14 -0800, Ted Dennison wrote:
>> > Interesting. I usually use "grep -c ";"" for SLOC counting. "wc -l"
>> 
>> shouldn't it be: grep -ce ";$" so you don't get all the semicolons in
>> the definitions of functions/procedures?
> 
> For me no, for two reasons:
> 
>   1) It can be argued that defining the interface elemets for
> subprograms is work on the same scale as any other ";"-ed line.
>   2) ";$" (semi's at the end of the line, for those who don't speak
> sed) doesn't get rid of them all anyway. In my code, it wouldn't be
> likely to get rid of *any*, as I always put only one formal parameter
> definition on a line.
>   3) "-c" only counts the *lines* where it appears, not the number of
> appearances. Thus even if ";$" *did* skip some single-line parameter
> definitions, the resulting count would end up nearly the same.

Yes and also you loose for:

   if sth then
   elsif sth then
   else
   end if;

This would be 1, but it should be 3 ? I'm not sure how a SLOC is
defined.

Preben

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<1ntnau8q4vfj5sj2srpa22kk71bntldhl2@4ax.com>...
> >Anyway I think it would be better to start a rogue from scratch in Ada
> >that try to port NetHack. I've been wishing to find the time to do it
> >(develop a new rogue in Ada, I mean) for years... :(
> 
> (Sorry for the self-quoting).
> 
> So now the only thing lacking is volunteers to write the FARG
> (Full-Ada Roguelike Game) :)

(I have the same point here, but I'll try a different tack this time.)

You are trying to put the cart before the horse. OpenSource projects
don't generally work like that. They have a natural lifecycle, which
starts with only a single individual. ESR goes over this in detail in
his writings at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/ (particularly the
first two). The executive summary would go something like this:

1) One Motivated Individual (MI) writes something useful (perhaps
marginally) that works, and releases it.
2) Others try it out and like it. Some of them become MIs.
3) MIs improve the product a bit, and release their improvements.
4) goto 2.

Its silly to go looking for loads of MIs before you have a product. So
what AdaHack needs (assuming it needs anything) is the first MI to get
it started.

The initial point I was attempting to make was that its silly to go
out and try to recruit loads of people to do something like this. If
you want it done, go write something and release it!

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: SLOC! (was Nethack! (was): AdaGames)

[Wes Groleau]

> Yes and also you loose for:
> 
>    if sth then
>    elsif sth then
>    else
>    end if;
> 
> This would be 1, but it should be 3 ? I'm not sure how a SLOC is
> defined.

I count it one for the "if" (or for the semicolon on the end of it)
plus one for each statement within it, which also has a semicolon.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

Its hard to collect metrics without having at least *some* of the developers
feeling that they will be rewarded or punished on the basis of the data you
collect. Hence, there's always *some* incentive to cheat. However, at least
in the studies I was involved in, there was a lot of grumbling about
metrics, but I never saw any obvious attempts to inflate or otherwise doctor
the measurements of code size.

Whatever you use: SLOCs, Semicolons, Halstead Bits, Source Bytes, Object
Bytes, anything. They all have weaknesses & can be artificially controlled.
But what choices do we have? We need some means of at least roughly
approximating code size or we might as well give up on trying to measure &
understand what we do. (I've been told by just about all of the developers I
ever collected metrics from that this would be just fine with them. However
after years of doing it, we were definitely able to see improvements in our
processes.)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Wes Groleau" <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:3CAC7AC6.A6DBDC32@despammed.com...

>
> This is true as long as the programmers were not
> thinking that there would be any reward or punishment
> for a higher or lower count.  Take a well-written
> module of a reasonable size in any language, and there
> are usually ways to greatly change the metric without
> changing behavior.
>

RE: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Mário Amado Alves]

>> I once ran a comparison between raw SLOC, semicolons and Halstead
bits 
>> on a large body of Ada code. The correlation between them was so
close 
>> as to make the method of counting pretty much irrelavent. The secret 
>> is to pick your

> This is true as long as the programmers were not
> thinking that there would be any reward or punishment
> for a higher or lower count.  Take a well-written
> module of a reasonable size in any language, and there
> are usually ways to greatly change the metric without
> changing behavior.

You're both right. I also did a study correlating program text metrics
and actual development cost in programmers*month. SLOC had the best
results, notably beating Halstead. It was a small project (10k SLOCs if
I remember correctly), but it was unbiased i.e. the programmers didn't
know about the metrics in advance.

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1130 bytes --]

You're saying that SLOCs/month was a larger number than
Halstead-Bits/month?(id est, 1 programmer for 1 month produces 1 module that
measures at 1000 SLOC or 500 Halsteads?) I wouldn't be surprised, but that
wasn't what I meant. I meant that there was a really high correlation
between SLOC, Semicolons & Halsteads - you could pretty much write an
equation of the form: "Halsteads = (M * SLOCs) + B" and have it be pretty
darned close to being right on the money.

Or are you saying something different?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"M�rio Amado Alves" <maa@liacc.up.pt> wrote in message
news:mailman.1017939422.18187.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
>
> You're both right. I also did a study correlating program text metrics
> and actual development cost in programmers*month. SLOC had the best
> results, notably beating Halstead. It was a small project (10k SLOCs if
> I remember correctly), but it was unbiased i.e. the programmers didn't
> know about the metrics in advance.
>

SLOC-wars

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"M�rio Amado Alves" <maa@liacc.up.pt> wrote:

> You're both right. I also did a study correlating program text metrics
> and actual development cost in programmers*month. SLOC had the best
> results, notably beating Halstead. It was a small project (10k SLOCs if
> I remember correctly), but it was unbiased i.e. the programmers didn't
> know about the metrics in advance.


Well, but SLOC is predicting by hindsight, and it has been fairly well
known since the 1960's that individual programmer's code output is
fairly constant when measured in keystrokes, so that about as many lines
per day of assembly as of APL can be delivered fully burdened.

Thus, one would expect that SLOC or something like it  fairly equivalent
to keystrokes would be the best hindsight predictor of
technologist-months of effort involved in completing a project or a
component.

But I thought (with no expertise here) that the goal of stuff like
Halstead's metric was that you could estimate it at specification time,
and do foresight forecasting with that estimate.  I'd shudder to think
what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.

Thus, in comparing a tool useful primarily for hindsight forecasting to
the detriment of one also useful for foresight forecasting, aren't you
doing the apples versus oranges thing?

xanthian.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 4 Apr 2002 08:46:28 -0800, dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)
wrote:

>You are trying to put the cart before the horse.

No, not really, because I'm not trying to start an Ada roguelike
project. It wasn't me who suggested it, I just jumped in the thread to
talk about NetHack's size and quality :)

> ESR goes over this in detail in his writings at
> http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/

Also, I think I have less faith in ESR's writings and ideas that you
do... I like open source, but I'm not religious about it. I even go as
far as admiting I like some Microsoft products, and I'd rather work
and program with NT/2k/XP than any Unix/Linux.

>Its silly to go looking for loads of MIs before you have a product. So
>what AdaHack needs (assuming it needs anything) is the first MI to get
>it started.

Rest assured that if I ever think it worthwhile to start writing an
Ada roguelike, I'll start it myself, and perhaps even maintain it so.
One of the more succesful and original roguelikes around (and the only
one I'd put as high as NetHack on a quality basis), ADOM (www.adom.de)
is the work of just one person who's not released his code because he
does not like the idea of other people disrupting his vision.
Undoubtedly unfashionable at this time of politically-correct open
sourcing, but the game is *very* good...

                                                               /Lektu

Re: SLOC-wars

[Bobby D. Bryant]

On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 23:14:09 -0600, Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> Well, but SLOC is predicting by hindsight, and it has been fairly well
> known since the 1960's that individual programmer's code output is
> fairly constant when measured in keystrokes, so that about as many
> lines per day of assembly as of APL can be delivered fully burdened.
...
> Thus, in comparing a tool useful primarily for hindsight forecasting
> to the detriment of one also useful for foresight forecasting, aren't
> you doing the apples versus oranges thing?

For current purposes all we seem to need is a metric that will give us a
rough feel for how big a chunk of code is.  All we need is -

 o a number that gives the rough metric,

 o a simple mechanism for acquiring the number,

 o a "standard" mechanism, so that it will mean approximately the same
   thing to everyone,

 o to the extent possible, a mechanism that works across languages.

I'm all for the most sophisticated free system that satisfies the above,
but I'm not interested in "more sophistication" if I can't get it by
running a script or typing a simple expression at the prompt.  It's not
like we're bidding on a project or evaluating employee performance.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

Halstead may have defined a number of metrics, but the one that seemed to be
discussed here was one for measuring volume of source code. I don't recall
the definition (someone help here?) but it had to do with looking at the
operators and the identifiers in a body of source and coming up with a
number that tried to reflect the semantic content.

Even though it is an after-the-fact number (as you rightly observe) it is
still useful. "How big was this project relative to that project?" "If I
have 10 programmers churning away on a large body of code every day, how
much of it are they impacting in a given month?" "If I give those
programmers faster workstations do they churn out more code in a given
month?" All those sorts of questions can be looked into to some extent by
being able to count up code volume - hopefully in a way that is less subject
to artificial manipulation.

All these sorts of metrics have their flaws - which we could debate
endlessly - but its still worth collecting some anyway in order to hopefully
advance understanding of the software development process & improve quality
& productivity.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:f6a580bb517ec9eced2eaa01cf9c9525.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> But I thought (with no expertise here) that the goal of stuff like
> Halstead's metric was that you could estimate it at specification time,
> and do foresight forecasting with that estimate.  I'd shudder to think
> what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
> might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.
>

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:a8jnnl$95l$1@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu...
>
> For current purposes all we seem to need is a metric that will give us a
> rough feel for how big a chunk of code is.  All we need is -
>
>  o a number that gives the rough metric,
>
Good.

>  o a simple mechanism for acquiring the number,
>
Good.
>  o a "standard" mechanism, so that it will mean approximately the same
>    thing to everyone,
>
Not likely to achieve it across all organizations because what is relavent
is always up for debate. Be consistent within an organization or project for
how that body of code is measured & monitored and you'll be doing good.


>  o to the extent possible, a mechanism that works across languages.
>
Not at all possible. Languages have such hugely varying syntax and semantics
that any attempt to compare one to the other is going to be hopeless.
Whatever comparisons you attempt to make based on the numbers are going to
either be a) meaningless or b) so debatable that you won't ever get anyone
to agree to do anything based on the numbers.


> I'm all for the most sophisticated free system that satisfies the above,
> but I'm not interested in "more sophistication" if I can't get it by
> running a script or typing a simple expression at the prompt.  It's not
> like we're bidding on a project or evaluating employee performance.
>
I once hacked together a program to count Halstead bits for Ada83 code. I
had a lexical analyzer sitting around and the rest was just a matter of
identifying input files and scanning over the tokens. A freebie tool to do
it wouldn't be hard to accomplish if a lexical analyzer for Ada95 is
available. Having one somewhere like AdaPower would create a "reference
standard" that might help in comparison of Ada code bodies. Halstead bits is
at least well defined and less subject to arguments about the relavence of
comments or white space or similar things.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Wes Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message news:<3CAC7AC6.A6DBDC32@despammed.com>...
> > I once ran a comparison between raw SLOC, semicolons and Halstead bits on a
> > large body of Ada code. The correlation between them was so close as to make
> > the method of counting pretty much irrelavent. The secret is to pick your
> 
> This is true as long as the programmers were not
> thinking that there would be any reward or punishment
> for a higher or lower count.  Take a well-written
> module of a reasonable size in any language, and there
> are usually ways to greatly change the metric without
> changing behavior.

The first project I worked on out of school used "statement count"
(essentially ";"s, but declarations didn't count) for predicting code
size and tracking progress during development. When I noticed that
people were being harrassed based on how the metric came out every
week, I sort of rebelled (I know, you're thinking, "surely not *you*
Ted?"). For about a month I added and deleted "null;" statements to my
code every week to make the count for every unit come in conspicuously
*perfect*.

Then there was the week I decided to refactor several badly designed
units, and got a visit from a bemused team lead mock-castigating me
for making *negative* progress that week. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Marin David Condic]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204050643.30f2e516@posting.google.com...
>
> Then there was the week I decided to refactor several badly designed
> units, and got a visit from a bemused team lead mock-castigating me
> for making *negative* progress that week. :-)
>
>
Another Helpful Household Hint is to always insert spurious delay statements
in any new body of code. That way, when your users start complaining about
the performance that is beyond your control, you can at least immediately
take out the delay statements and say "Well I got you a 25% improvement with
some quick code changes - be patient and I'll keep working on the harder
problems..." Then, of course, you do nothing and wait for the next
generation of hardware to come along and fix your problems for you. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Metrics! (was) Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Wes Groleau]

> Then there was the week I decided to refactor several badly designed
> units, and got a visit from a bemused team lead mock-castigating me
> for making *negative* progress that week. :-)

In my fifteen or so years as a "software engineer,"
I would estimate that about half of the bug fixes
and 20% of the enhancements I've done have been
accomplished by REMOVING code.

On one occasion, out of curiosity, I ran some code
through a metrics tool, that said, among other things
that one of Halstead's metrics "predicted" that the code
would take X hours to develop.

I laboriously edited the code to reduce all names
to one to three characters long, removed all comments,
converted all reserved words to one or two-character
abbreviations, collapsed all white space, merged short lines,
and then compressed the whole file.

I checked the size of the file.  If there was a way to
type a compressed file, to create that one in X hours
would have required typing faster than anybody I ever
heard of.

Is it possible there was a misprint in the book?  Hours
instead of weeks?

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: SLOC-wars

[John R. Strohm]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1571 bytes --]


"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:f6a580bb517ec9eced2eaa01cf9c9525.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "M�rio Amado Alves" <maa@liacc.up.pt> wrote:
>
> > You're both right. I also did a study correlating program text metrics
> > and actual development cost in programmers*month. SLOC had the best
> > results, notably beating Halstead. It was a small project (10k SLOCs if
> > I remember correctly), but it was unbiased i.e. the programmers didn't
> > know about the metrics in advance.
>
>
> Well, but SLOC is predicting by hindsight, and it has been fairly well
> known since the 1960's that individual programmer's code output is
> fairly constant when measured in keystrokes, so that about as many lines
> per day of assembly as of APL can be delivered fully burdened.
>
> Thus, one would expect that SLOC or something like it  fairly equivalent
> to keystrokes would be the best hindsight predictor of
> technologist-months of effort involved in completing a project or a
> component.
>
> But I thought (with no expertise here) that the goal of stuff like
> Halstead's metric was that you could estimate it at specification time,
> and do foresight forecasting with that estimate.  I'd shudder to think
> what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
> might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.

Your shudders would be misplaced.  Such estimates are actually pretty good,
IF you go to the necessary level of detail.  Discard your preconceptions and
read Barry Boehm's "Software Engineering Economics".

Re: Metrics! (was) Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Wes Groleau" <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote:

[and quoted without attribution:]
 
> > Then there was the week I decided to refactor several badly designed
> > units, and got a visit from a bemused team lead mock-castigating me
> > for making *negative* progress that week. :-)

> In my fifteen or so years as a "software engineer,"
> I would estimate that about half of the bug fixes
> and 20% of the enhancements I've done have been
> accomplished by REMOVING code.

Yes, that experience here is as fresh as an hour ago.

Given a few hints over in comp.lang.java.programmer, I realized that I'd
over-coupled some code and misplaced other code.  By the time I finished
five hours work, I'd probably ripped out three times as much code as I
added, and detached 26 modules from one module they didn't need to
reference, and removed about eight other instances of excess coupling.

Those are the days that make you feel best as a programmer -- when you
can actually put to use all that stuff you learned about what makes good
software.  And as you say, lots of times it is by exercising the CS
equivalent of Occam's Razor.

xanthian.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: SLOC-wars

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net> wrote:

> "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message

>>  I'd shudder to think
>> what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
>> might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.

> Your shudders would be misplaced.  Such estimates are actually pretty good,
> IF you go to the necessary level of detail.  Discard your preconceptions and
> read Barry Boehm's "Software Engineering Economics".

Well, the rest of the story:

As a contractor at Motorola (IRIDIUM), I watched my Motorola employee
office mate and our common manager very carefully work out an estimate
based on a project of similar complexity done about a year before I
arrived, using the SLOC there as a major basis for the estimate.

The result?  The two level higher-up managers read the estimate workup,
said, "Oh, you've done something like that before!?!" and cut the
furnished estimate in half.

Not even the best estimating tools and techniques will satisfy a manager
with a preconceived deadline.

xanthian.



-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: SLOC-wars

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <0b1a7c596d3d0851f6e35f3e81df82bd.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:

> As a contractor at Motorola (IRIDIUM), I watched my Motorola employee
> office mate and our common manager very carefully work out an estimate
> based on a project of similar complexity done about a year before I
> arrived, using the SLOC there as a major basis for the estimate.
> 
> The result?  The two level higher-up managers read the estimate workup,
> said, "Oh, you've done something like that before!?!" and cut the
> furnished estimate in half.
> 
> Not even the best estimating tools and techniques will satisfy a manager
> with a preconceived deadline.

In another setting I have seen similar things happen, and seen the
project completed according to the calculated schedule rather than
the manager-fiat schedule.

Re: SLOC-wars

[John R. Strohm]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:0b1a7c596d3d0851f6e35f3e81df82bd.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net> wrote:
>
> > "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
>
> >>  I'd shudder to think
> >> what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
> >> might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.
>
> > Your shudders would be misplaced.  Such estimates are actually pretty
good,
> > IF you go to the necessary level of detail.  Discard your preconceptions
and
> > read Barry Boehm's "Software Engineering Economics".
>
> Well, the rest of the story:
>
> As a contractor at Motorola (IRIDIUM), I watched my Motorola employee
> office mate and our common manager very carefully work out an estimate
> based on a project of similar complexity done about a year before I
> arrived, using the SLOC there as a major basis for the estimate.
>
> The result?  The two level higher-up managers read the estimate workup,
> said, "Oh, you've done something like that before!?!" and cut the
> furnished estimate in half.
>
> Not even the best estimating tools and techniques will satisfy a manager
> with a preconceived deadline.

You're right about that.  I've seen a few examples.

The key to using COCOMO is explaining how the estimating methodology works,
and pointing out how the methodology TAKES INTO ACCOUNT the fact that the
team has done something similar in the past.

This is the beauty of the COCOMO methodology, once management has bought in
to it.  The only thing they can argue with is the SLOC estimate, and THAT
you have to defend.  The effort adjustment factors are all set in stone: the
methodology takes certain qualitative criteria into account, and maps them
into quantitative adjustments.  Once management agrees with you on the SLOC
estimate, and agrees with you on the qualitative, they're stuck with the
number that falls out when you turn the crank.

The other key is to calibrate the methodology to your own organization.
This requires you to track a lot of projects at the company, doing SLOC
counts, noting the qualitatives, and then doing your own nonlinear
regression to fit an estimator.  General Dynamics Fort Worth went through
that exercise, in detail, and came up with their own COCOMO scale factor and
exponent.

The key to getting management buy-in on COCOMO is to show them the accuracy
that it has historically achieved.  COCOMO is damned good, as estimating
goes, far better than anything else that was available when it came out.
The data is in Boehm's book.

Re: SLOC-wars

[John R. Strohm]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in
message news:a8kc5k$669$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Halstead may have defined a number of metrics, but the one that seemed to
be
> discussed here was one for measuring volume of source code. I don't recall
> the definition (someone help here?) but it had to do with looking at the
> operators and the identifiers in a body of source and coming up with a
> number that tried to reflect the semantic content.

Halstead defined something like a dozen or twenty metrics for source code,
including the one you described.

When the obvious studies were done on real programs, lots of them, *ALL* of
his metrics were shown to be very strongly correlated with SLOC.  At that
point, interest faded, because SLOC is far easier to measure than any of
Halstead's metrics.

Re: Metrics! (was) Nethack! (was): AdaGames

[Ted Dennison]

Wes Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message news:<3CAE0C16.5B1E974B@despammed.com>...
> > Then there was the week I decided to refactor several badly designed
> > units, and got a visit from a bemused team lead mock-castigating me
> > for making *negative* progress that week. :-)
> 
> In my fifteen or so years as a "software engineer,"
> I would estimate that about half of the bug fixes
> and 20% of the enhancements I've done have been
> accomplished by REMOVING code.

My experience jibes with that just about perfectly. I was never more
pleased than about 2 years ago when I discovered that someone had
invented a buzzword for it ("refactoring"). That makes the activity so
much more palatable to management. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: SLOC-wars

[Ted Dennison]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in message news:<a8kcri$6e7$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...
> I once hacked together a program to count Halstead bits for Ada83 code. I
> had a lexical analyzer sitting around and the rest was just a matter of
> identifying input files and scanning over the tokens. A freebie tool to do
> it wouldn't be hard to accomplish if a lexical analyzer for Ada95 is
> available. Having one somewhere like AdaPower would create a "reference

OpenToken (http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/OpenToken/OpenToken.html
) contains one.


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204080534.293c5ca7@posting.google.com...
>
> OpenToken (http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/OpenToken/OpenToken.html
> ) contains one.
>
>
Thanks. I've downloaded the .zip for 3.0b & will have a look at it -
including the documentation. It may be possible to whip something up
relatively quickly. Now all I've got to do is remember what the definition
of a Halstead Bit is... :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:lwa7wTIAtfI6@eisner.encompasserve.org...
>
> In another setting I have seen similar things happen, and seen the
> project completed according to the calculated schedule rather than
> the manager-fiat schedule.

Once in a "career altering move" I was standing up in front of a bunch of
senior bozos explaining my best attempts to estimate how long it was going
to take to finish up a software project. I had used all the science and some
of the alchemy I had available to me to make the guess significantly better
than pure rectal extraction. I was hit between the eyeballs with a
two-by-four and informed that this was the "wrong answer".

My response was to inform my superiors that they should have told me what
the answer was before the meeting so I could have got it on the slide, but
that I could easily take a grease pencil and write down any date they liked
right now if they would be so kind as to tell me what numbers they wanted to
see. I further informed them that when they got done dreaming about the cost
of engineering in Heaven and we shot their schedule straight thru the head &
woke them up, I'd be standing here telling them "I told you so..."

Needless to say, "I told you so..." is not a senior bozo's favorite thing to
hear. That's when I learned about the story of Hercules killing the
messenger. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: SLOC-wars

[Wes Groleau]

> Halstead may have defined a number of metrics, but the one that seemed to be
> discussed here was one for measuring volume of source code. I don't recall
> the definition (someone help here?) but it had to do with looking at the
> operators and the identifiers in a body of source and coming up with a
> number that tried to reflect the semantic content.

Halstead defined all sorts of inter-related metrics.
A tool called Logiscope from a company called VeriLog
(no connection with the HDL of the same name)
could parse Ada and give all those metrics and those
of McCabe and a couple of other folks.

I think it was Halstead because I read his book and not
the others (but might have been one of the other guys
quoted in the Logiscope docs) who "showed" mathematically
that all the metrics could boil down to making accurate
estimates for a module SOLELY BY THE PARAMETER PROFILE. 

I find that hard to believe!

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: SLOC-wars

[Wes Groleau]

> > But I thought (with no expertise here) that the goal of stuff like
> > Halstead's metric was that you could estimate it at specification time,
> > and do foresight forecasting with that estimate.  I'd shudder to think
> > what the accuracy of foresight guesses at SLOC from similar projects
> > might accomplish in setting milestone dates and such.
> 
> Your shudders would be misplaced.  Such estimates are actually pretty good,
> IF you go to the necessary level of detail.  Discard your preconceptions and
> read Barry Boehm's "Software Engineering Economics".

Or look at the following:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/articles/practice-preach/practice-preach.html

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

You mean that if we were to write the package specs for a given system, you
could examine the number and types of the parameters and estimate the size
from that? I'd suspect that it would at minimum be application domain
dependent, but I could at least imagine that within a given organization and
a given domain, one might find a high correlation between number/types of
parameters and the size of the modules.It could be useful for finding early
estimates on the ultimate size of the system. If it worked, you could
probably find a way of estimating it from UML diagrams at some sufficient
state of completion.

I'm not saying I refuse to believe it, but I'd really like to see it work in
practice.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Wes Groleau" <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:3CB1B06F.C1D68C14@despammed.com...
>
> I think it was Halstead because I read his book and not
> the others (but might have been one of the other guys
> quoted in the Logiscope docs) who "showed" mathematically
> that all the metrics could boil down to making accurate
> estimates for a module SOLELY BY THE PARAMETER PROFILE.
>

Re: SLOC-wars

[Wes Groleau]

> Thanks. I've downloaded the .zip for 3.0b & will have a look at it -
> including the documentation. It may be possible to whip something up
> relatively quickly. Now all I've got to do is remember what the definition
> of a Halstead Bit is... :-)

If you can't remember, I have access to Halstead's book...

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: SLOC-wars

[Wes Groleau]

> two-by-four and informed that this was the "wrong answer".
> 
> My response was to inform my superiors that they should have told me what

Sounds like "superiors" was the wrong word here.....

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: SLOC-wars

[Ted Dennison]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in message news:<a8s9ro$je3$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...
> Once in a "career altering move" I was standing up in front of a bunch of

At GE we called it "career limiting move", or CLM. CLM was the name of
my vollyeball team in the GE league. :-)

> two-by-four and informed that this was the "wrong answer".
> 
> My response was to inform my superiors that they should have told me what
> the answer was before the meeting so I could have got it on the slide, but
> that I could easily take a grease pencil and write down any date they liked
> right now if they would be so kind as to tell me what numbers they wanted to
> see. I further informed them that when they got done dreaming about the cost
> of engineering in Heaven and we shot their schedule straight thru the head &
> woke them up, I'd be standing here telling them "I told you so..."

My typical reaction to this is to say: "Well then...what funtionality
would you like to remove?". I always have my favorite removal
candidates handy too, with savings estimate. :-)

The best response I ever saw though came from the legendary Gendreaux.
He walked up to the whiteboard in front of them all and wrote the
following:
---
  o  Bugdet
  o  Quality
  o  Schedule
Pick any two
---



-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: SLOC-wars

[Marin David Condic]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204100539.55abecac@posting.google.com...
>
> At GE we called it "career limiting move", or CLM. CLM was the name of
> my vollyeball team in the GE league. :-)
>
We sort of preferred "altering" as a kind of non-judgemental-sarcasm. Being
reassigned to some hell-hole corner of the plant to run mindless disk
backups until you retired was "Just An Alternate Career Path" - you're being
"Judgemental" when you say it isn't as good as "Vice President of
Engineering". :-)


>
> My typical reaction to this is to say: "Well then...what funtionality
> would you like to remove?". I always have my favorite removal
> candidates handy too, with savings estimate. :-)
>
Yeah. Great technique. Here's a problem. You don't usually build "extras"
into an engine control. Everything in there has to be there or the engine
doesn't run. (A handful of exceptions, but not many) So you can't always
come in with a stripped down version.

But the technique is wonderful for workstationish apps where you can say
"Here's the 27 screens we originally planned and on which I based my
estimate. Which ones do you want to live without in order to get the
deadline you want?


> The best response I ever saw though came from the legendary Gendreaux.
> He walked up to the whiteboard in front of them all and wrote the
> following:
> ---
>   o  Bugdet
>   o  Quality
>   o  Schedule
> Pick any two
> ---
>
The classic triangle. "Good" vs "Fast" vs "Cheap". The problem is that the
usual kind of guy who makes it to Senior Bozo status is the kind of guy who
gets the square peg into a round hole with a mallet. Sometimes their reality
checks bounce. One of my favorite manager jokes:

Engineer: "Hi, I came over to help you move your piano."
Manager: "Thanks. I already got it moved."
Engineer: "How'd you get that piano moved all by yourself?"
Manager: "Hitched the cat to it."
Engineer: "How did you get a tiny little cat to pull that piano up three
flights of stairs?!?!?"
Manager: "Used a whip!"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com