Alberthro, Ashbad, and I were recently having a discussion on #Cemetech/SAX about the Axe language, what strengths and weaknesses the language has, and what role we feel it has in the community versus what role we feel it should have. I'll take the liberty of summarizing what each of the three major participants stated during the discussion:

KermMartian wrote:

<KermM_> I dislike that people use it as an excuse for not learning z80 ASM
<KermM_> whereas it should just be a stepping stone to ease the transition from BASIC to ASM, imho
<KermM_> It's very admirable work, of course, but I feel that any time someone makes something cool in Axe, the only person who really did any work was Quigibo
<KermM_> It doesn't say a whole lot about the programmer's skills; it rolls out grayscale and everything else for them
<KermM_> Not to mention that it's not good for real applications and games, because it creates huge executables
<KermM_> [regarding finishing a lot of games fast] alberthro: that's not the idea of making calculator games, in my opinion
<KermM_> I feel it's to have a good time, and especially to be challenged to work with impossible constraints
<KermM_> if I wanted something where I could put together an impressive game fast, have tons of memory, and tons of speed, I would just write computer games
<KermM_> alberthro: they're only quality because they use Quigibo's hard work, imho, with a few notable exceptions, of course
<KermM_> But I don't feel they show any great programming skill, just some creative game design
<KermM_> I still respect the programmers of those games very much for their creativity, and for the perseverance and for actually finishing something
<KermM_> But it doesn't make me think they're awesome hackers.
<KermM_> The calculator community started as hardcore hackers who really know their way around hardware and software
<KermM_> And the community leaders are largely still people with those skills, eg. BrandonW, PatrickD, (myself?)
<KermM_> If these Axe coders really want to be true hackers in the positive sense, I feel they should use Axe for what it should be
<KermM_> A stepping stone to exercising their supposed skill and excellent problem solving skills in z80, to solve even harder problems with less, faster code that requires them to think a lot more about memory management, cycle-counting, and all that


Alberthro wrote:

<alberthro> The great thing about Axe, though, is that it lets people create great games faster. ;) I've seen very few decent games in pure Z80 ASM, and a LOT more in Axe these days. Why not? The thing that makes me like the game is the gameplay and the game itself, not what programming language it is in. :)
<alberthro> Ehh... not quite what I see. I see games that are of serious quality, not games that are programmed on the bus on the way back home. :P
<alberthro> Yeah, but so what? They add creativity and spirit to the program. :) So what if they don't have any skills? I value their ideas and effort more than what they used to build it.
<alberthro> Sure, they don't get my "wow awesome hax0r" points. But they do get my respect for putting effort into what they think is something great. :)


Ashbad wrote:

[Ashbad] While I have my complaints about Grammer (I still am unimpressed with the fact that simple cellular autonoma routines built into the language...) I am personally hopeful it'll be the cause of Axe losing it's heated popularity
[Ashbad] Axe is a crutch.. Grammer isn't.
[Ashbad] I'm even more inclined to simply call it the "Game Maker" of the 8x series.
[Ashbad] I'm sorry to comdemn it so, but I realized it once they added a "Pt-Get" command
[Ashbad] [Regarding ASM vs Axe games] alberthro, I see games that were made in one fifth of the time, and double the size
[Ashbad] But, the problem is that half of the community treats them as "uber hax0rs"
[Ashbad] And they are far from.


What do you think? Do you agree with me, who respects Axe but feels its coders should use it as a crutch to ASM education? Do you agree with Alberthro, who thinks that even though they don't get points for being skilled code hackers, Axe programmers should get respect for finishing games fast? Do you agree with Ashbad, who dislikes the language entirely as a symptom of increasingly-lazy coders? Or do you have your own opinion? Let us know!

Important disclaimer: Don't fall into the trap of synecdoche. I am Kerm Martian, not Cemetech, so don't go around saying that Cemetech hates Axe.
I think that Axe should be used more for helping someone get into programming in ASM, but if people want to continue programming with Axe that's fine with me. They just won't get as much respect from me and other members of the community. I disagree with it being the "Game Maker of the 8x series", though. I think of it as a dumbed-down version of C with extra functions to make it appealing to newbs. Even though I am generally against people who program exclusively in Axe, I think Axe will bring more aspiring programmers into the community, out of which some will become great z80 ASM coders.
KermMartian wrote:
<KermM_> It's very admirable work, of course, but I feel that any time someone makes something cool in Axe, the only person who really did any work was Quigibo
<KermM_> It doesn't say a whole lot about the programmer's skills; it rolls out grayscale and everything else for them
How is that different from any other language and library? I do a lot of programming in C#, does that mean that the only person who really did any work was the language designers and library writers? Obviously not. If there's a higher level language that exists and makes development faster and easier, I don't see any reason not to use it. Should people learn ASM? Yes. Should they have to stick to it then? No. Should it matter to anyone else what language someone else prefers to write their software in? No--as long as the language isn't getting in the way (or you have to support the code).
I don't think AXE was designed to be a bridge to ASM, but that it was designed to provide all the fancy features in an easy accessible way. Yes, that can certainly mean larger programs and crappy code doing things that the programmers of would not otherwise be capable of doing without a lot of work, but I still see it as a great tool and major accomplishment/success for what it provides -- a GREAT alternative to BASIC (though, agreeably perhaps not as such to ASM).

I haven't gotten a good look at Grammer, but I say that these languages are generally either (1) here's "everything you need" so that you don't have to know all the complex (2) here are tools which you can use to design anything from scratch, including fancy tools (which are therefor not part of the core language) ... or perhaps somewhere in between. OPIA aims to be (2), providing all the language tools to make any kind of framework using higher level constructs designed to run efficiently on the machine (rather than just plugging components together); but the core language will not have graphics etc in it. It's more aimed to be an alternative to assembly, and admittedly with a bit of overhead, but very minimal.
meh, I never really liked Axe to tell the truth. It was always more confusing for me, I think the best I could make with it was a tiny little animation, but even that was rather confusing.

also, one thing I do note is that the axe games I have seen so far are not as high quality as asm games, am I the only one who thinks this?
Well now I feel obligated to give my counterargument despite my obvious bias. Smile

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I dislike that people use it as an excuse for not learning z80 ASM

Axe is designed to make games. Its a fact that you don't need assembly knowledge to make amazing games as so many have shown. What you do need ASM for is shells, operating systems, video/hi-fi sound, USB interface, etc. I agree that if you had one of those in mind, you could use Axe instead as a stepping stone, but this is not its primary purpose. I think this is where your main bias comes from Kerm, as you are more on the utility side of z80 rather than the gaming side.

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I feel that any time someone makes something cool in Axe, the only person who really did any work was Quigibo

I couldn't disagree more and just the thought of this literally makes me laugh out loud. There are very few constructs in the Axe language that automate game making. Nearly all of the built-in routines are common throughout a wide variety of programs. There aren't built-in "cellular automation" features or things similar to that (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's a cool feature of Grammar).

I mean, its a terrible argument to make. EVERYTHING is a derivative work in some way or another. How do you call yourself a 'hacker' when you didn't even write the drivers for your computer that allow you to type your post. Or create your own instruction set architecture instead of unfairly mooching off of all the hard work of those engineers who invented z80, x86, and ARM. Sometimes you have to draw a line...

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It doesn't say a whole lot about the programmer's skills; it rolls out grayscale and everything else for them

But ASM programmers do this all the time! Many of them don't write their own grayscale or sprite routines but use some of the already-made libraries on ticalc.org, and increasingly, the source from the Axe routines. There isn't anything wrong with using something already made, but with a different purpose. This is actually the modern definition of "Hacking".

If something is proven to work, you don't need to re-invent it unless you believe it is preventing you from some other larger goal.

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I see games that were made in one fifth of the time, and double the size

I hear this a lot, but it really isn't the case. The actual size increase of a pure Axe program verses a pure assembly program is HUGELY dependent on how experienced the programmers are on both sides. "Double the size" is like comparing a new Axe programmer to an extreme optimizing assembler such as myself. By contrast, comparing two people with one year of experience in each language only gives the assembly programmer a very slight advantage.

In addition, Axe isn't done optimizing yet. Each version is improving both size and speed bringing it closer to the assembly limit. It will never get there of course, but I still see significant optimizations in the future.
It says a lot about the programmer's skills, to my mind - a good programmer picks a language, framework, set of libraries etc appropriate for the job in hand. Axe works well for its intended purpose. The only reason I can think you'd have a problem with that is that you have to put in much more work to yield the same results. Razz
To me, it's more about what you do with the language you use than what language it is. Why shouldn't someone be able to choose the language they like and/or feel most comfortable with to express their ideas or put together a useful app that might not have existed otherwise? Not everyone has the talent to understand certain languages or concepts. “Bridge” languages bring more accomplishments within reach of more people. There is a tradeoff, of course, but if there wasn't some value to it, I don't see why we would be using high-level languages on most modern platforms today.

Put another way: Which would you prefer? An interesting program released, albeit created with limited or not-so-optimal tools, or for it never to have seen the light of day at all?

Also, I think some people (I would be included in this group) feel it's more important to see the final program take off in a reasonable amount of time than for it to be absolutely perfect but take exponentially more time and effort. After all, the whole reason computers were invented in the first place was to reduce the net time and effort taken by mundane tasks, not the opposite. Personally, I've always created programs because I wanted them for my own use—not simply just for fun—so perhaps that is what leads me to feel this way.
Here is how I see it. I am not a great Assembly programmer, but I would say I know my way around. I am not Brandon or Kerm or Runer or Brian, but I would say I have an adequate understanding of the hardware and software of these calculators.

Sometimes, I want to do a bit of complex coding in assembly, but quickly. My idea for Grammer was that I could use a bunch of ASM routines through calls and whatnot and I just decided to make it interpret tokens and redirect it to routines.

I spend most of my spare time immersing myself in the art of mathematics and in some cases assmenly is much better suited for speed and efficiency than TI-BASIC. However, I spend a good chunk of my year without a computer, so the ability to code directly on the calc in Axe or Grammer using simplified code is great.

I love Assembly, TI-BASIC, Grammer, and I dabble in Axe. I am a bit biased toward Grammer, but I love when I can create algorithms or games very easily and on a small level.

Also, the particles were a request and I thought about it for days how to implement it.I still have >9000 bytes to fill up in the App, so these little treats are nice and give an effect to easily take advantage of. Smile

Erm, sorry if I offend anybody :/
I think it's excellent to see new languages coming out. When I started on Antidisassemblage (which I highly recommend NOT using, because OPIA is the real/working/proper/advanced version of it), I thought I was the only one that would do such a thing. I'll bet there will be another or two over the next several years, and I'll bet also that some will be better written/designed than others. I think Axe was well written for what it's meant for; and there are a whole slew of programs coming out of it (and yes some of them are crappy; but how many crappy TI-BASIC programs exist? ...::shudders::... It's still a better alternative).

I'm still waiting to see what Grammer does differently than Axe (aside from being interpreted -- which, if done right, can offer some great techniques).

Kerm: If you are more interested in the low-level quality and interfacability of a language, I'm certain you will love OPIA. However, people who expect it to have graphics and I/O built right into it (or for it to be on-calc) will not. (fails to prevent self from advertizing) It will have all the tools that I find useful which I can implement with minimal overhead (polymorphic single inheritance classes, interfaces, closures, coroutines, function pointers, etc.), and the language will optimize the heck out of code as part of compilation.

::cough:: review my OPIA post on closures ::/cough::
Being a "hardcore" Axe game programmer myself, I wholeheartedly agree with what Quigibo said.
Looks like quite a few people beat me to it, with some seriously stronger arguments than I have! Smile Nevertheless, I will add on to the case for Axe. Wink

KermMartian wrote:
Do you agree with Alberthro, who thinks that even though they don't get points for being skilled code hackers, Axe programmers should get respect for finishing games fast?


First and foremost, you've misunderstood me - the respect should be attributed to the quality of the game, not how fast the programmer makes it. Sure, if they make it fast and with good quality, then maybe they get a little more respect. But my first and foremost focus is on the quality - the gameplay, the originality, the graphics and speed.

Axe, in itself, is a great language. It allows those who are more familiar with TI-BASIC to expand their horizons and realize any ideas not possible with TI-BASIC. And as a few others have said, it introduces some more low-level concepts, like memory, VAT, and buffer handling. And as a plus, you can indeed make games and programs faster - both in dev time and execution speed. Smile

So what if they aren't as skilled? Take, for instance, Minecraft. It's 100% Java. Do I even care about his skills? Sure, it's slow, and it's buggy at times, which can be attributed to Java. But 99% of the world doesn't care - remember that he's the one rolling around in his newfound money! Razz

My point is this - Axe allows people to quickly create awesome games and programs without having to delve into painful Z80 ASM. It's somewhat like TI-BASIC in a way - you can make terrible programs with it, but you can make awesome ones too. For instance, BuilderBoy's physics engine, and Graviter by leafiness0. Very decent graphics and gameplay.

Finally, another point I'd like to bring up - the purpose of programming. Why do we program? I program because it's fun - not because I want to optimize the heck out of my program. If someone doesn't find Z80 ASM attractive or something worth learning, that's alright. Sure, there are people who do find that fun, and that's great for them. But if someone just wants to program in a certain, maybe not as optimized language to have fun, why should anyone stop them? New people in programming are going to write sub-par programs - they can't help it. But, at the very least, they are learning how to program, and they are having fun. If a person is programming for a reason other than to have fun, then that person should consider a new hobby... Smile

Well, that's all I have to add to the argument. I can't really make many points, simply because the posts above me pretty much describe my viewpoint. Smile
Let's also not forget that there's nothing preventing someone from creating a crappy ASM program. Unless you're reasonably competent, it's quite possible to do just as badly if not worse in ASM that any other programming language. *cough* TI *cough* Wink
Is there any argument against Axe that cannot be applied to the "C vs. ASM" or "C vs. <Interpreted language>" debates with equal measure?
Travis wrote:
it's quite possible to do just as badly if not worse in ASM that any other programming language. *cough* TI *cough* Wink


haha.

I'm going to have to agree with the pro-Axe side here. Besides, language wars are dumb. What are you trying to do, just boost your own ego by assuring yourself that your work is more 'pure' or some shit? While I would agree that games made with Game Maker, or even to a certain extent, Zedd (No offense Builderboy) are cheap, I cannot see Axe as a 'cheap' programming language.

By the way, that 'you' up there is a rhetorical one, not actually directed at anyone in particular.
Most languages have advantages and disadvantages and it is the programmers choice to figure which is the best to use. Axe is the incentive for BASIC programmers to switch to a lower level language with more control. So what if they decide not to program in assembly? We are creating and using tools that make a job easier and that has been the driving incentive to advancing civilization. You have to remember that a good number of Axe coders are new to programming. It took me a few years to work my way beyond BASIC (partially due to lack of a computer and internet), and it took a while to get onto the forums and remain active. Axe is encouraging new coders to experiment and a lot of them will probably turn to assembly. But in that time, they are being active in the calc world. Our community is growing at a fast pace and activity is generally high on the active forums.

BASIC++ for making coding simple and easy
Axe++ for bringing in new members and allowing advanced experimentation
Assembly++ for being awesome/fun
squidgetx wrote:
Besides, language wars are dumb. What are you trying to do, just boost your own ego by assuring yourself that your work is more 'pure' or some a?


It's not a language war; nor is it a "purist" agenda being issued from Kerm, Me, Cemetech, etc. The notion of pushing aside the argument as a "language war" just seems to me to be very immature and uncalled for. A language war would be mindlessly saying "Axe sux" with no reasons; we aren't only giving reasons, but we're not even saying Axe sucks at all. We just find that the way it's being used is far different than how we think it should be used, and we're merely expressing our personal concerns.

RE: the "ego" argument, my ego doesn't revolve around small-time calculator programming and who uses what and how, and I'm quite positive Kerm feels the same. I'm not going to cut myself if someone uses Axe to make a cool-looking game, and I'm not going to feel depressed if people don't use Axe as a bridge. Such an accusation isn't very appropriate, or nice.

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Is there any argument against Axe that cannot be applied to the "C vs. ASM" or "C vs. <Interpreted language>" debates with equal measure?


Yes, and no. For one, in my mind, Assembly to C on a computer (or even something like C to Python on a computer) is not the same as Assembly to Axe on a calculator -- it seems more like a computer comparison to Game Maker to C on a computer. Yes, you can claim that Assembly game programmers do use pre-made routines at times, and I'm sure quite a few do use some. But, it's not all packed in a neat little box pre-made for you so you can draw sprites all over the graph buffer in a cool fashion in like 3 lines of code or less. Game Maker is like this, as is Axe, which has a sliced bread routine for pretty much any graphical command you can think of. C doesn't. Even the easiest to use graphics libraries that can be used with C, such as SFML, SDL, or Allegro, don't hold all out of the box commands. So, tell me Axe is closer to C than Game Maker?

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So what if they aren't as skilled? Take, for instance, Minecraft. It's 100% Java. Do I even care about his skills? Sure, it's slow, and it's buggy at times, which can be attributed to Java. But 99% of the world doesn't care - remember that he's the one rolling around in his newfound money!


Not even a valid comparison. Minecraft is made in Java, which many here agree sucks, but you can't say it was easy for him to make it. Notch didn't use a Game Maker-ish language, for starts, but rather a professional-grade language used heavily in the technology industry. His language didn't come with "Draw a Cube!(X, Y, Z, COLOR)" commands, instead he used the LWJGL, which in fancy terms means he's working with OpenGL and OpenAL directly, with Java bindings. I don't know about you, but OpenGL routines seem slightly more complex than "Draw a sprite here" routines. The fact that it's slow may be attributed to Java's weakness in speed compared to something like C, but the "bugginess" has *nothing* to do with the language, just Notch-quality crappy programming. I would accuse the same of an Axe game being buggy, calling the root of the problem bad code writing instead of "Axe is a bad language".

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Being a "hardcore" Axe game programmer myself, I wholeheartedly agree with what Quigibo said.


... Do you care to do more than just agree with him wholeheartedly, and perhaps provide some reasons why you personally like it rather than "It's cool cuz I use it"?

[code]Kerm: If you are more interested in the low-level quality and interfacability of a language, I'm certain you will love OPIA. However, people who expect it to have graphics and I/O built right into it (or for it to be on-calc) will not. (fails to prevent self from advertizing) It will have all the tools that I find useful which I can implement with minimal overhead (polymorphic single inheritance classes, interfaces, closures, coroutines, function pointers, etc.), and the language will optimize the heck out of code as part of compilation.[/quote]

So, no built it I/O or graphics? Sounds a lot less of a Game-Makerish language than Axe already.

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Also, the particles were a request and I thought about it for days how to implement it.I still have >9000 bytes to fill up in the App, so these little treats are nice and give an effect to easily take advantage of.

Erm, sorry if I offend anybody :/


Well, I'm still against the notion of adding the particle effects to the language, but it's your language Razz do what you want! My personal suggestion would be to allow for inline assembly perhaps, so that one could still achieve making such fast routines without them being built into the language?

As to offending anyone, you did nothing but be nice in your post, so I doubt anyone seeing it as offensive. Wink

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also, one thing I do note is that the axe games I have seen so far are not as high quality as asm games, am I the only one who thinks this?


nope.
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It's not a language war; nor is it a "purist" agenda being issued from Kerm, Me, Cemetech, etc. The notion of pushing aside the argument as a "language war" just seems to me to be very immature and uncalled for. A language war would be mindlessly saying "Axe sux" with no reasons; we aren't only giving reasons, but we're not even saying Axe sucks at all. We just find that the way it's being used is far different than how we think it should be used, and we're merely expressing our personal concerns.

RE: the "ego" argument, my ego doesn't revolve around small-time calculator programming and who uses what and how, and I'm quite positive Kerm feels the same. I'm not going to cut myself if someone uses Axe to make a cool-looking game, and I'm not going to feel depressed if people don't use Axe as a bridge. Such an accusation isn't very appropriate, or nice.

So why are we making such a big deal of it? Are you saying that you actually don't care if people don't use Axe as a bridge? Or are you 'immaturely' 'pushing' this argument aside? There's no way this is not a language war. While you may not be saying 'axe sux' with no supporting evidence, you are still calling into question the value of a language in the context of its role and usefulness.

Let the language prove itself. We don't see professional level games in Game Maker, we see them in C or Java or whatever. Besides, who are you to dictate the role of someone else's project?

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also, one thing I do note is that the axe games I have seen so far are not as high quality as asm games, am I the only one who thinks this?

Someone tell me when the last assembly game not written by thepenguin was released that can compare to what some of the more skilled Axe programmers have done.
Wow, this thread certainly got a lot of our inactive members to appear once again! May I ask how you all noticed it and chimed in? It seems a bit coincidental to thing you might have all run across it on your own. Wink I'm very happy that thus far this topic is doing more or less what I had hoped it would, namely get some intelligent discussion and debate going. I'm a little disappointed that there's not more argument from the anti-Axe side of things to keep things lively, but I'll see what I can do for my part as far as agreeing with some of the statements made and disagreeing with others.

Xeda wrote:
Most languages have advantages and disadvantages and it is the programmers choice to figure which is the best to use.
Absolutely agreed. BASIC has strength of ease-of-use and simplicity, weaknesses of speed and power. Axe is fast and expressive, but still not as powerful as ASM, and generates relatively large programs. ASM is very fast and very powerful, but requires the more mature coder to understand and write it well. I think the danger comes when a programmer doesn't have a full set of accurate details at his or her disposal, for example if programmers are repeatedly told that BASIC is way too slow and that they should be using ASM instead, which is obviously false in many cases, or if they're repeatedly told that ASM is way too hard and that they should pursue Axe instead, which is also false in many cases. I feel that there may be a culture of "ASM == too hard, don't bother" that may have sprung up at the same time as the very positive creation that is axe.

SquidgetX wrote:
What are you trying to do, just boost your own ego by assuring yourself that your work is more 'pure' or some a?
With all due respect, I think everyone was being very high-brow and discussing the languages themselves rather than their own emotions or egos, so I hope you'll join us in that intelligent discussion. I don't believe anyone criticized Axe for a lack of purity (unless you can point out such a statement, in which case I'll happily retract this), instead critiquing programmers who might otherwise have the skills to also explore ASM's power but haven't done so because they feel comfortable with Axe and believe that ASM is beyond their abilities. It's the same argument for people who rely of Java as a crutch when they could be using Python, C++, or a number of other languages better suited to whatever they're trying to make.

Qwerty wrote:
s there any argument against Axe that cannot be applied to the "C vs. ASM" or "C vs. <Interpreted language>" debates with equal measure?
C vs. ASM, no. With a sufficiently good optimizer, there's very little point in writing x86 ASM these days. The exception is, for example, the IPP library that I used for my thesis, which got a 10x improvement over any C-optimized code for convolution by using very very skilled hand-coded ASM. For the latter, I believe that this basically is a C vs. Java sort of argument; Java is great for getting beginners into programming, but when you start building full games in it (cough Minecraft cough) I believe you're doing something wrong. This goes for Albert too.

Travis wrote:
et's also not forget that there's nothing preventing someone from creating a crappy ASM program. Unless you're reasonably competent, it's quite possible to do just as badly if not worse in ASM that any other programming language. *cough* TI *cough*
I can't agree with you more, which is why there are many people who should definitely not attempt ASM, especially in the younger and less mature segments of the community, which I feel frequent the same general areas as the biggest Axe development (no judgment, I think we've all agreed on the difference in the audience and userbase on the community websites).

Souvik wrote:
Even though I am generally against people who program exclusively in Axe, I think Axe will bring more aspiring programmers into the community, out of which some will become great z80 ASM coders.
That's precisely the point I'm making. I worry that Axe is being marketed as a replacement for the "impossibly hard" z80 ASM, which is not the niche I believe it should fill. I believe it has values that make it stand proudly next to ASM without replacing it.

qazz42 wrote:
also, one thing I do note is that the axe games I have seen so far are not as high quality as asm games, am I the only one who thinks this?
I'd argue more for lack of originality than lack of quality. In any language, BASIC, ASM, and Axe, you'll have newbies who write very many very poor-quality programs. I feel, though, that many Axe programs end up being very similar, since they're based on features that are themselves extremely powerful and can be plugged together. The downside is plugging those same features together again and again creates a bunch of very similar games.

Quigibo wrote:
How do you call yourself a 'hacker' when you didn't even write the drivers for your computer that allow you to type your post. Or create your own instruction set architecture instead of unfairly mooching off of all the hard work of those engineers who invented z80, x86, and ARM. Sometimes you have to draw a line...
I still call myself a hacker because I understand how those drivers work, and if I was marooned on a desert island with a computer, a bootloader, and electricity, I could find a way to write drivers to make the hardware work, given enough time and reference material. I also understand the components of an instruction architecture, how they affect and are affected by the physical components and layout inside the CPU, and could design my own instruction set and schematic for a CPU that could execute it, again given time and a big enough piece of paper. If I just took it for granted that when I run function blah, something magically appears on the screen, and didn't want to investigate and understand what happened under the hood, I wouldn't call myself a hacker. That's the difference.

Quigibo wrote:
hear this a lot, but it really isn't the case. The actual size increase of a pure Axe program verses a pure assembly program is HUGELY dependent on how experienced the programmers are on both sides. "Double the size" is like comparing a new Axe programmer to an extreme optimizing assembler such as myself. By contrast, comparing two people with one year of experience in each language only gives the assembly programmer a very slight advantage.
Wouldn't you agree that the kind of understanding of how Axe works and how the underlying processing, memory management, and code generation that an ASM coder might have would allow him or her to create better and more efficient Axe programs? Also, I believe I heard that Runer was responsible for optimizing Axe to a large extent, so kudos to him for making the gap between ASM and Axe smaller, if that is indeed the case.

benryves wrote:
The only reason I can think you'd have a problem with that is that you have to put in much more work to yield the same results.
You know me, I always like reinventing the wheel so I can understand how things work. Wink

Finally, thanks to an alert by Ashbad (cheers Ashbad), let me remind you once again that _I_ am not Cemetech, I'm merely a lowly coder who likes expressing his opinion and prodding people to think critically about issues. I far prefer this kind of argument to the annoying Politics posts that certain members of ours love to post.
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Wow, this thread certainly got a lot of our inactive members to appear once again!
I lurk Wink
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With all due respect, I think everyone was being very high-brow and discussing the languages themselves rather than their own emotions or egos, so I hope you'll join us in that intelligent discussion. I don't believe anyone criticized Axe for a lack of purity (unless you can point out such a statement, in which case I'll happily retract this), instead critiquing programmers who might otherwise have the skills to also explore ASM's power but haven't done so because they feel comfortable with Axe and believe that ASM is beyond their abilities. It's the same argument for people who rely of Java as a crutch when they could be using Python, C++, or a number of other languages better suited to whatever they're trying to make.

While I will agree that some of my assumptions are rather rash, I still stand by their ideas. I find it next to impossible to believe that there is no egotistic connection here. Why would we want Axe to be a bridge to asm if we don't believe that asm is pure-er than Axe? I refuse to elaborate or discuss further on this point, and mean no offense to anyone.

Regarding the last few sentences of your post I see Axe being used to make games, which is what it is for. I will be the first to happily suggest ASM to anyone trying to do something not suited to Axe (OS's/shells, elaborate sound, USB, etc. I believe that this has been touched upon earlier)
  
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