Re: [boost] [gsoc] Interest check for 3d geometry proposal

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc] Interest check for 3d geometry proposal
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-03-27 13:37:20

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Kornel Kisielewicz
<kornel.kisielewicz_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Emil Dotchevski
> <emildotchevski_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> The main issue is that most software developers don't need such a
>> library; only game developers do,
>
> What about academics?

Similar libraries are used by many developers for sure, but in my
experience working with academics, their focus is very different.

>> but you can't get them to agree on
>> the details. I have worked in the game industry long enough to see
>> that not only each team has their own "math" library that's slightly
>> different than everyone else's, but also many teams periodically end
>> up rewriting it.
>
> While I agree with the experience, I disagree that it supports the
> statement. Many if not most game developers also write their own
> shared pointers, their own RTTI, their own threads, own filesystem
> wrappers, own string classes and even own containers... from the two
> commercial game engines I had a pleasure to see, those weren't better
> and usually even worse than those from STL/boost. It's more about the
> mentality of game programmers who usually have a very high
> self-esteem, and tend to think "I'll do it better". But that doesn't
> mean that there are no reasonable game programmers out there, which
> are already using boost versions of the forementioned libraries, and
> wish that boost included a 3d geometry oriented library also...

I have not had a game development job for the last 3 or so years but I
would be very surprised if things have changed significantly.

In part, the problem is in the "I'll do it better" mentality but the
other reasons are ignorance (what do you mean shared_ptr doesn't
necessarily allocate memory?) and a desire to have control over all
critical systems in the game (what would I do if I want shared_ptr to
have 16-byte alignment?)

Note, I'm not trying to justify this attitude, I'm just stating the
facts as I've seen them.

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode