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Jonathan Blow on scripting languages

Jeru Sanders · 185.3K views · 2019-06-02 · 9:30

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

Cited in threads about Lua, embedded scripting, and game engines as a concise argument that scripting languages are redundant.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2020–2022

Topics

Programming language designGame programming & engines
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jonathan blowscriptinggame enginesembedded interpreterslanguage design

What people said

pipeline_peak · 2022-12 · Recommendation

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. [VIDEO]

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pipeline_peak · 2022-10 · Recommendation

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 [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.

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veidelis · 2021-05 · Reference

"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 [VIDEO] I agree with the rest wholeheartedly.

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Sources

Video by Jeru Sanders, played through YouTube.

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