Less painful prototyping in C++
16/Sep 2008
Just a bunch of useful links/ideas that may help you if you need to make a quick prototype in C++ one day. I know, it may sound stupid, but sometimes it really is a good idea, especially if you’ve the engine+ compatible assets ready.
Digression: of course, initally, you may try to be a smart ass and have this idea of making your prototype in C#/XNA. After all, it doesnt have to be very fast and it’s 100x more friendly with better turn-around times and so on. Some hours later when wondering why your object is totally borked you find out that Microsoft’s implementation of Matrix.CreateWorld is actually wrong. Then you delete your project, go back to your old engine and promise to never talk about it again.
Back to useful stuff.
“Watched Constants”: my very basic implementation is 40 lines of code (if that) and works wonderfully. It almost turns C++ into a scripting language (well, for tweaking stuff only).
if you want some more complicated settings - check out Paul’s PropertyUtil class. Just plug&play.
In other news - Stack Overflow public beta started. I’ve mixed feelings about it (noise:signal ratio seems kinda high, with 20 people posting same answer, then another 5 writing something not really related to the question at all), but it’s worth to have a quick look at least.
Old comments
Mouldy Links | Programmer’s Log 2008-09-17 21:30:23
[…] Less painful prototyping in C++ Interesting post about some useful C++ code for prototyping quickly. […]
Riddlemaster 2008-09-18 16:11:34
With Stack Overflow it’s not that bad as with Twitter for instance (I know it’s for different audience but the idea is a bit similar). At least there is some chance somebody will read your question. Probably as it will move into release the chances will fall though.