Here's my $0.02.
The first 90% of a software project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
I saw this in someones signature in gamedev.net. No truer statement has ever been made! They don't teach you that in University
3) Do a staight across port to C# or whatever with absolutely no architectural changes. I mean none. Get it stable first. We use the same lousy data structures, the same update loops, all in a single thread. No getting nuts with classes and methods and all that crap. Straight across. I'd even suggest we fake out some of the VB methods like Circle() to preserve the investment in code at least for the initial port. We get it stable and usable and everyone using it before we make ANY major architectural changes. This includes threading. The current architecture will be easy enough to thread where it counts when the time comes.
C# enforces a strict OO approach, which is going to make a
straight port difficult. What I'd like to do is get both the VB and some C# code to meet each other half way. If we update both code bases at the same time to reach some sort of agreed upon middle ground, we can address fundamental architecture at the same time.
Most of the problem lies in the fact that VB just doesn't let you program the same way that C#, C++, etc. do.
An alternative order would be to back port some or all of Num's new physics into the VB source before freezing and porting.
I plan on doing a little of this, though not nearly to the degree its done in the current C++ source. I want to move to a seperate 3rd party library for that.
Now, my $0.02 would not be complete unless I pointed out that a port is a lot of work. A lot of work, a lot of sideways work. We have to be very very sure we want to do it and we want to be very very sure of the reasons why we are doing it. Let me play devils advocate for a moment. Why do we want to do it? So we can have multiple code authors? We can do that on the VB source by moving it to SVN or some other source code management system. For performance reasons? Don't be so sure. I could probably double the perfromance of the current VB code with a couple of weeks of focused work without losing stability. If perf is the main goal, some serious profiling and code reviews would reap more gains for less pain. For scalability across multiple CPUs? Yes, VB is single threaded, but DB is processor bound and does basically no I/O. That one thread is always busy, making maximum use of a single processor. You think moving to multiple threads will speed things up? Not on a single processor machine it won't. All else being equal, the added context switching will slow it down on single proc machines by maybe 10% or so. Got a dual core box you say? Use teleporters, run two connected sims and utilize 100% of both processors. Don't get me wrong, I love theads. Hell, I even like fibers when used right. DB would love threads and scale well, but only on machines with the processors to take advantage of a threaded architecture. Better physics maybe? Look, code is code. If you want elastic collisions or bouncy walls, back port the algorthims. Moving to a differet programming language is no panacia. It's the algorthms that count, not the programming language as far as physics go. Separating the UI from the engine? Future client-server versions? Graphics packages? All good stuff and admittably, harder to do from VB. But we need to be realistic about why we are porting. Those things are nice, but not near term and not the first reasons many people site for porting.
My primary issue with VB is that it makes programming complex data structures a
pain. If DB were in just about any other language, I would never had considered switching. Heck, FORTRAN, Lisp, Matlab, even
Lino would probably be fine.
You don't realize until you move back to C++ how extremely constricted VB is. And, what's amazing to me at least, is that I had that same sort of feeling when I moved to C# from C++. Managed code is
so nice.
In brief, just about any other language than VB is going to be just fine, and I've personally fallen in love with .NET
EDIT - Oh, I should point out we will take a perf hit with C#. Managed code is wonderful, you don't have to worry (as much) about memory leaks and such, but the garbage collection costs you maybe 10% on the client.
I've realized this too, but speed is becoming less of an issue in my mind because the fundamental algorithmic data structures are going to make 10 times as much of a difference as any code overhead. Usually 100 lines of code take up 80% of your CPU time. You're usually better off implementing more complex algorithms than trying to refine those 100 lines. (For instance, collisions and collision algorithms, like quad trees). Any code overhead in a language is going to only multiply existing orders of complexity, not bump them up to higher orders.
