How to get Havok 4 and other upgrades...

I've had several years of instruction in various languages, I only mentioned the class (10 weeks btw, is a full quarter) because it's the first class where I made anything tangible and sharable, as opposed to: "Look! I made a program that can convert from celcius to fereheight!"

My God, they made you do that too? I've another three years in my programming course, the main Java stuff has passed pretty damned quick, sometimes I think it's TOO easy a language to learn after scripting in PHP for so long, just doesn't seem hardcore enough after PHP's hand-holding. But then it's easy to waste huge amounts of time trying to find an error in C and derivatives of C.

As an aside and back on topic, if SL were coded with strict adherence to the OOP architecture, it would be laughably easy to write a new physics module and drop it in, since all you need to do is add conversions for equivalent functions, compile and you're done (at least the basic upgrade part, no new stuff).

Yes. Well. Many people here have been programming in various languages quite literally for decades. Argument from authority isn't likely to impress. (And for the record, I like OO stuff.)

Yes, and in at least three classes for various languages.
My first class, an assembler class, and again when I got to a four-year college in a class that taught 7 different languages at once (and the prof. being the head of the dept didn't realize that his teaching methods and class model didn't work--even when only three groups (2 people each) turned in *anything* for the final).
I'm beyond that now, I changed my major to Digital Media Arts and Design--we ALWAYS produce something worth holding onto. OK, not always, didn't keep much from a few classes (photography, Interactive Web (mostly because of its size), and timeline design, but if we'd actually finished the animatic that I'd've kept (wasn't enough time left in the term)).



True.

Neither classes nor structures are found in all object oriented programming languages.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying, but I can see how you misunderstood it... sorry for not being clearer. I will try and explain better in a later message, but I don't have time right now to get into it.

Um...

This gets to the issues of object model and class hierarchy.

If you design your API (libraries, frameworks, classes, whatever) well and you guess right about what the future holds, this is true... but it's true regardless of whether you used OO design or some other component scheme. If the API for the physics engine changes, and you guess wrong, you can find your class hierarchy locking you into some very inefficient designs.

Factoring a problem into components is an art. OO makes it easier to do, but it doesn't make it any easier to decide where to break the problem up.

True, but if it's easier to do, then it's still an advantage
I guess if SL v2.0 were to be anything, it would be a complete re-write with all the same functionality and (in theory) zero bugs. Re-written in such a way that it will be much easier to develop for in future and so that all parts of it are modules so you can drop them and drop in new ones easily. A lot of stuff in SL does seem that way, as we can turn off a lot of stuff in debug without any noticeable trouble in doing so, so maybe they're headed that way.
I suppose the main advantage of an easy, well architectured program is that bugs shouldn't wreak havoc on other areas of the program, which seems to be the case still atm with SL

I agree.

I always kind of figured LL avoided putting in inherent data structures
more advanced than lists because they're too easily mis-used by fledgling scriptors and would undoubtedly cause additional sim lag.

I just wish that list functions weren't so dang slow.

If lists were first class types, that would help a lot!

list foo;

foo[3] = 10; /// instead of foo=llListReplaceList(...);
llDialog(message,foo[4..17],...); // Instead of a sublist call.

(I'm haivng trouble today....)

heck ditch list and just use

integer myArray[5] = {1,2,3,4,5};
char myCharacterArray[3] = {'a','b','C'};

etc.

Lists are more versatile than arrays. Making lists a first class type would give you the same capability as arrays while still allowing inserts and appends. One of the most powerful languages of all time has nothing but lists as a data type.

Well, as long as we get array-like usage, I don't really care.

We're not going to get array-like usage, because LL isn't going to make any changes in the LSL syntax until after the mono switch. They already said that.