Jonathan Blow on scripting languages
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in threads about Lua, embedded scripting, and game engines as a concise argument that scripting languages are redundant.
What it is
A 10-minute clip from a Jonathan Blow Twitch stream in which he argues that game engines do not really need separate scripting languages. He questions the value of embedded interpreters when the main language can do the job.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends pipeline_peak · 2022-10 · on “Lua, a Misunderstood Language (2021)”
Lua doesn’t really solve anything fundamental. It’s popular because it’s small and easy to embed. But embeddable interpreters, while fun pet projects, they’re redundant and trivial. Jonathan Blow has a great explanation of this [this video] Write reusable libraries first, let people embed them into whatever scripting language/GUI app they want. Scripting languages, Linux distros, it’s all Pokémon cards.
Recommends pipeline_peak · 2022-12 · on “Scripting-language inspired by JavaScript and GLSL”
There’s nothing about this that screams “this language needs to be created”. Call me a pessimist, but I’ve seen So many toy languages on HN. My advice is, if you don’t have any original ideas and want users, your best bet is to implement a subset of JS, that’s the route I’m taking. Jonathan Blow has a great talk on the redundancy of scripting languages in game engines. [this video]
Cites pengaru · 2020-08 · on “Parsing S-expressions in C (2019)”
> I can guarantee you that a game will need a scripting language. Better get that done already. Is that really so certain? [this video]
Cites veidelis · 2021-05 · on “Modern Javascript: Everything you missed over the last 10 years (2020)”
"Gaming engines are scriptable for a reason" - I'm sure I've heard the opposite opinion from respectable sources at least 2 times. Here's Jonathan Blow [this video] I agree with the rest wholeheartedly.