New blog post: Why MiniScript?

jstrout

I've been getting more and more questions about MiniScript in other communities lately, so I'm going to try to start answering the most common of them in a series of blog posts. Here's the first one.

Why MiniScript?
As more and more people discover MiniScript, the question is occasionally asked: why? Why was MiniScript created, and why should someone use it rather than some other language?
It's a perfectly valid question, so in this post I will try to clarify. My purpose is not to convince anyone of anything, but to explain why, after years of using other scripting languages, I felt compelled to create something new. I'll do this without attacking other languages, since every language has its fans and I don't want to kick anybody's dog; instead I'll focus on what I think is really cool about MiniScript, and how it offers a collection of advantages that, taken together, can't be found anywhere else.

Check out the full blog post, and feel free to post any questions/comments here!

SynapticBytes

Hi Joe,

This was a good read. As I mentioned elsewhere, I just found MiniScript today, and it looks pretty nice. I discovered an affinity for embedded scripting languages many years ago. I dabbled briefly in CoreWars, but really got interested when I came across a robot tank battle game (which I can’t for the life of me remember its name now) where you programmed your bot ai and sent it out to battle other ai bots in death matches. Ever since then, I’ve always dreamed of building a game where the players create their own sentient , autonomous participants in the game world.

I’ve been a programmer for about 36 years both professionally and personally (even used REAL Basic once up a time), but have been on hiatus for about 5 years, and just started getting into Unity, two weeks ago. Miniscript might just be the perfect companion to resurrect my design dreams from years gone by. Hopefully I can make some useful contribution to the project.

Russell.

jstrout

Thanks for posting, Russel! Wow, you and I have very similar history — I too dabbled in CoreWars, and got sucked into RoboWar (which may well be the game you were thinking of) for quite a while. And I suspect you already know about my involvement in REALbasic. 😉

Unity is a lot of fun, and with MiniScript as your scripting engine, I bet you'll be able to make some very interesting coding games. I can't wait to play them! Feel free to start your own thread(s) here and post questions, progress reports, requests for testers, etc. Have fun and let us know how it goes!

SynapticBytes

Robowar, that sounds about right. Looks like your inspiration for MiniScript may have come from similar places as mine 😃