[MUD-Dev] Python script as stand alone MUD server...

[Edward Glowacki]

On Thu, 2004-01-22 at 01:46, Jason Slaughter wrote:

> I am wondering if there are any issues I am not anticipating with
> using Python? I am also wondering why there isn't more excitement
> about Python in the MUD community (am I just caught up in the
> Python hype)?

I'm not sure why it's not more popular for MUDs, other than the fact
that more people know C than Python, so they code in what they
know...

> Of course, being a scripting language, it will be slower than
> compiled code, but is that really going to be an issue? It seems
> to

Well, Zope is a large application written in Python (probably
similar in size to a MUD in terms of code I would guess), so that
might be a good point of comparison.  Also consider that it
supposedly easy (haven't actually done it myself yet) to write
modules in C and integrate them with Python, so if you found a
section of code that needed better performance, you could write just
that section in C.

> me the bottleneck in a mud server would be in the game logic, not
> in the lower level server/socket stuff (and the game logic would
> ultimately come down to Python scripting even if I compiled the
> server using C++, and used Python only for scripting)... so I
> would say that as far as speed goes, the loss won't be crippling
> at all

A lot of that lower level code is contained in Python itself and
wouldn't actually be running interpreted, so the performance hit
shouldn't be at that level at all.

> (and it would be worth spending an extra $1000 on a faster server,
> at least, if it means saving a 100+ hours in programming and
> debugging).

And between the time you start coding and the time you open for
beta, that $1000 will only be $100... ;) Gotta love Moore's
Law.... =)

> What are some other issues that I have to think about using
> Python?

Finding programmers that know it.  I can't see any reason why a MUD
written in Python (with a few of the appropriate modules in C)
running on decent hardware couldn't be fast enough for a MUD.

-ED
--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
A PBS mind in an MTV world.
	-- Author unknown
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