On: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

[nkrisc]

The docs have an example of iterating an array backwards:

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_@gdscri...

    var array = [3, 6, 9]
    for i in range(array.size() - 1, -1, -1):
         print(array[i])

Admittedly not very pretty but it certainly works.

[zen928 → nkrisc]

After reading several posts above yours describing the level of effort and pain trying to use this scripting language and how multiple people in this thread avoid trying to use it as much as they can, then reading your small code sample, it's hard to not describe as a level of perception whiplash.

"why god why can't they just have for loops!?!?" and the problem was just ... knowing how to foreach over a range correctly? the idiom and language syntactical preference that python, a language older than java, has done for decades...?

Really trivializes every complaint and the assumed skill level of every person that I see in this thread complaining about gdscript to the absolute lowest level. Thanks for the post!

[galkk → zen928]

I disagree.

The doc states that range function returns an Array, so it looks like to iterate backwards you basically allocate array of indices and use those indices to get values from an original array. Not much better than reverting original array, if you will ask me.

Maybe there is some optimization for trivial scenarios, but the referred doc doesn’t mention it.

It really looks like python 2 case when you needed to remember that dict.items() returns copy and most of the time you needed iteritems().

[indigo945 → galkk]

While that's true, the caveat here is that unlike Python, GDScript does not have a garbage collector. The main performance problem with creating an array copy in a soft-real-time application like a video game is usually not the allocation, but the additional GC pressure, which could cause frame jitter. GDScript does not suffer from that latter problem.

[nkrisc → galkk]

This is one of GDScript’s right spots for sure. But if this is the performance bottleneck (in a dynamic scripting language) you’re facing, then maybe that bit of code should just be a GDExtension, written in C++.

I would imagine for most games the performance impact from this won’t matter much.

[galkk → nkrisc]

The problem in this case is not the potential performance bottleneck, but the bad ergonomics for a dev, that leads to the complain. The rest is consequence.

And to me it looks like pure language/stdlib problem. Like for me, the proposed solution looks ugly both from syntax and what is going on behind curtains perspective.

I would rather not to code in a language that makes/tolerates decisions like that.

[nkrisc → galkk]

I mean if this one thing is enough to turn you off, you do you. I find GDScript to be 98% good for a dynamic scripting language.

Personally I’d just reverse the array and then iterate it. It’s going to make about zero difference.

Every language has its sharp edges.

[kragen → galkk]

cpython is slow enough that copying the list of keys was rarely a significant bottleneck

[d13 → zen928]

I agree! I use both GDScript and C# with Godot, and GDScript is excellent. But, I’ve been programming for 40 years, and my baseline is “all programming languages are bad” :) All I need is a Turing machine with nice ergonomics and I’m happy. I’m very easy to please.

[mdaniel → nkrisc]

I had high hopes when I saw the yield keyword in the reference, but then saw it's basically just a reserved keyword as they don't seem to actually support generators. I would guess the less eye-bleeding version of all those 1, -1 things is just making a ReversedIter and using that: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/g...