What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 10:54 AM, Albert van der Horst
<albert at spenarnc.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Not to mention that mostly a game is understood, not as something like
> chess, but an FPS (first person shooter) game.
> But that is real time programming, one league beyond beginners
> procedural (sequential) or functional programming.
> The result is either a disappointment or the illusion of having created
> something while in fact one used a frame work where all the hard work
> has been done.

Even worse, it's usually graphical. From what I've heard from
companies and people that produce graphical games, there's at least as
much work in creating assets (images, 3D models, textures, stuff) as
there is in writing code. And that's before you even consider writing
a storyline, which is something that I wouldn't expect a new
programmer to worry too much about ("just go around shooting stuff up"
makes a fine storyline), but which the best commercial games always
put a lot of work into. (And it does improve the game significantly. I
wouldn't have spent anything like as many hours on Alice: Madness
Returns as I have if it didn't have the storyline it does.)

If someone's going to create a game from scratch, it should probably
be a puzzle game. Things like 2048 wouldn't take nearly as much effort
as an FPS. Turn-based rather than real-time, no heavy graphics, a
simple bit of randomness and only a few controls. Pretty
straight-forward.

ChrisA