Progress so far

[SN4K3]

You could develop it on Kylix 3, it's a pascal compiler (like Delphi) that can be used in Linux and Windows.

[IsmAvatar]

Read over a few more posts. You'll see that I already considered using Kylix, and then finally went to Java, and I'm sticking with Java now.

[clam]

Kylix sucks. I downloaded Kylix earlier this year, and it's no longer supported or updated. I opened the Kylix IDE on Fedora Core 4, and the interface didn't work - the windows were all stretched and there was no text in the menus etc. Even if I could have got it working, I doubt that the latest versions of Delphi would be compatible with Kylix. The Java language is way better anyway, it makes perfect sense (to me at least) and is very cleanly implemented.

[IsmAvatar]

My only run-in with Java is that it's very prone to inefficiency, and I'm an efficiency nut - it is my obsessive compusion to make everything as efficient as possible.
But still, the language is very powerful, logical (oh do I love the logic), cross-platform, and speedy (yes, I know it runs slow at a lot of things, but that's just because those things are inefficient. I wrote my own sorting-and-pairing database algorithm that goes through a million iterations in less than a second. Let's see C pull that one off without an ASM adaptation). It's also got numerous uber-powerful IDEs to develop in it, like Eclipse.

[clam]

If you're into efficiency, you're probably going to cry out in horror when you see my "it-gets-the-job-done" code for sorting resources by id in LGM ;D. I'm sure you'll get some perverse pleasure from going through and finding all the inefficiencies (I'm pretty sure most of it's fine). BTW, I'm hoping to send the LGM code to you by the end of this week (seeing as I'm going away to Tasmania for most of the summer holidays next week).

I really should take another look into Eclipse, it sounds like it's good, but I don't know if it really does anything unique (I think I'm still VERY happy with all the handy things NetBeans does - the only problem I have with the GUI editor is you need to include the layout extensions jar, which is another 100KB). If Eclipse is a native compiled app, I might switch to it, because NB is written in Java and sometimes gets a bit sluggish.

[IsmAvatar]

My understanding is that Eclipse is written in Java and then natively compiled from there. As such, it tends to be sluggish at times, but generally it's quite fast - fast enough for all intensive purposes. It takes a while to load up, tho. One of my favourite aspects of Eclipse is its Debugger, Error Reporting mechanism, and code Formatting is divine, compared to NetBeans. I will warn you, although as you probably already know, Eclipse does not, to my knowledge, offer the UI stuff that NetBeans does.
I would suggest Eclipse over NetBeans any day of the week.

As for your horribly inefficient sorting, you do realise that a number of efficient formulae exist for sorting - and a lot specially designed for Java. Not to mention, you can use Collections.sort if all the elements in the collection implement comparable.

[LynkWhidden]

IsmAvatar said:

I already knew C++, I then spent a year trying to forget it. It is easily one of the worst programming languages I have ever seen.

With C,you can make a nintendo DS game. C++FTW!

[IsmAvatar]

Again, there are some vast differences between C and C++. I love C, but hate C++. Thus, your argument that you can make a nintendo DS game in C is completely unexplanatory of why you feel that C++ is "for the win", but only demonstrates your lack of knowledge of it.

Furthermore, we are so far into the project using Java now, that it would be a huge waste to have to start over with another language. Not to mention the advantages there are to making it in Java over C or C++. Obviously, the project is open source, so if you feel so obliged to see a C++ version, you are welcome to start on it yourself, and even use some of the source of LGM as reference.

[clam]

I haven't really got that far into C++ or C, but after reading through some of Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in C++" (a wonderful free html book), the impression I get of C++ is not good. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they took a simple and usually elegant language (unless you consider all that #IFDEF crap), then they added classes and all sorts of other little bits, but still tried to make it compatible with C. They didn't compare apples and oranges, they mashed them into a mutant fruit pulp!

[IsmAvatar]

I respect them for trying to extend upon C by making C++ object oriented. Their approach, however, was very poor, and their memory management is utter crap (compared to C). Java on the other hand was developed to take over C++ with a far more rational approach. Although I digress that Java is far from perfect; there are many aspects that I clash with, for example there are no Pointers in Java, which may make it easier, but also restricts you from advanced usage. Also, the method- and event-oriented language tends to hide things very well, making it very prone to inefficiencies, and then magnifying those inefficiencies. Despite this, I still take preference to Java for GUI-related programming and projects intended to be cross-platform such as LGM.

[IsmAvatar]

This topic has been split into a few, such as Dev Team Discussion, and other such things. But most importantly, it has been replaced by a sticky which merges a few other stickies as well, titled "The LateralGM Project, Topics of Interest"

Thus I'm unstickying this topic. I may choose to give an update at a later date, seeing as this may be a little outdated now. I may also choose to not update and just lock it. For now, I'll leave it open and see what you guys think.