Warning: This post is focused on programming concepts.

Speed and ease of use have always been at odds with each-other in the computing world. In the days of the Apple II, most people started writing games in BASIC, until they needed more speed, then they switched to something faster. BASIC is an interpreted language and runs slower, but something like C is a compiled language and runs much faster even with equivalent code. That brings us to video games, which are really just specialized computer programs themselves. Why would someone use an interpreted language or a compiled one? Let’s explore that question.

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4 comment(s) | Tags: other, programming, compiled, interpreted, C#, Java, C++, SCUMM, GOOL, scripting

I really like watching speedruns. It's really cool to see the sort of tricks and glitches people have come up with to get through the game faster. Recently this speed run of Half-Life was released, and its pretty cool. I'll note that this is a multi-segment run, by a group of people (you can see the current runner's name down at the bottom). So, its not a straight run-through, but its still pretty cool. Check it out.