Using the programming language "ML"?

Hello!

Sorry about this off-topic mail, but
you guys are the only bunch of game
developers that I know of :slight_smile:

I would like to know if anyone has serious
interest in developing games (commercially) using
the programming language “Standard ML”?
(ML originally = MetaLanguage)

Actually I’m thinking mostly of PlayStation
games here - but for now I’m just looking
for any game-developer interest in ML at all…

And yes, this means you will have to
forget almost everything you ever
learned from coding C/C++ :slight_smile:

What is ML? Well here are some hints:

ML is a higher order functional programming language.
Code written in ML is usually only half the size
(or less) than the corresponding C/C++ code.
The syntax of ML resembles ordinary Maths
notation in many places.
It is a typesafe language - meaning that when a program
compiles there can only be the following kinds of errors:

  1. Infinite loops (which the compiler unfortunately cannot detect)
  2. Logical programming errors (like unintended “features”)
  3. Out of memory problems, which usually results in a shutdown.
  4. Runtime exceptions, which can be caught.

Thus it is not possible to have memory leaks,
memory trucations, wild pointers etc. This
of course means potentially fewer bugs.

But currently almost no graphics/game/sound/
gui/whatever API’s exist for ML and again:
The language is very different from C/C++…

For a more detailed description of the language
see:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/what/smlnj/sml.html

Please reply to me by private e-mail,
to keep this off-topic discussion off this list :slight_smile:

Sorry for the interruption…

Cheers–
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com

I would like to know if anyone has serious
interest in developing games (commercially) using
the programming language “Standard ML”?

I’ll actually keep this on list since I’m a functional language bigot
;). While I don’t currently have the time, I’d love to see some of
this stuff develope. I graduated from Penn State, which has an
excellent functional programming languages department (Dale Miller,
Department Head, is one of the primary developers of Lambda Prolog). I
did standard AI, game theory, and compiler stuff in ML and Prolog, and
had a blast at it. It’s frightening how few lines of ML it takes to
write a compiler for a procedural language.

What’s the state of binding other languages to ML? The standard NJ
interpreter is written in C, so I’d assume it couldn’t be too
hard. Your best bet may be to try and write ML bindings for
SDL. Hmm… makes the brain tingle ;).

m.On Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 10:53:35AM +0200, ANOQ of the Sun wrote:

–
“How wonderful! How mysterious Programmer
I carry wood! I draw water!” Loki Entertainment Software

  • Anonymous Tao poet

Michael Vance wrote:

What’s the state of binding other languages to ML? The standard NJ
interpreter is written in C, so I’d assume it couldn’t be too
hard.

Most of the compilers have C-bindings, but none of them
are “standard” (i.e. they all do it differently and
incompatibly). But I know someone who might create a
standardized C<->ML binding sometime… :slight_smile:

Your best bet may be to try and write ML bindings for
SDL. Hmm… makes the brain tingle ;).

Actually my original interest were for PlayStation -
but you “just” don’t become a PlayStation developer
that easily, so starting with SDL might not be a
bad idea :slight_smile:

Cheers–
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com