Monday, 13 July 2009

SQLLite and the further revenge of C

As a followup to this and this, this is the sort of thing I miss about C.

In other news, this (reasonable to me) suggestion to use SQLLite for Angband data didn't go down too well on the forums. I'm not sure why - even DCSS has used SQLLite for a long time now. Some of the objections that are raised remind me of late '99, when I was developing applications in the Telecomms Industry using C++ on Solaris boxes, and several teams in the department I was in refused to use C++ because "its too slow".

Inertia is a powerful force, it seems.

2 comments:

Jotaf said...

I can't believe some of the nonsence in that thread! I've seen the XLS version that someone there compiled, and even that is much tidier than any old text file. If a database matches the data-driven structures so nicely and someone volunteered to do the work, I don't see what's wrong. But anyway we're the ones developing new-gen roguelikes, while they argue over the speed gains of .raw files :)

Dave said...

I know. I especially loved the comment "we can't use a database because we'd have to write a database editor".

Its not as if SQLLite is a standard, widely-used, public domain cross-platform database with editors available on just about every platform under the sun.

I suspect the mindset of "if its not broke, don't touch it" is at play here, but I seriously do think that Angband *is* somewhat broke - the data file handling is (IMHO) holding the game back, and moving to a database to store it would be a big step forward.

As I pointed out in the post, even Crawl uses SQLLite now (as does the IPhone, Firefox, etc etc)