Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

ITA used Common Lisp. The game company you mentioned is probably Naughty Dog who created "Game Oriented Assembly Language" for their games. GOAL was created in Common Lisp but was Scheme-like. They switched away after being acquired by Sony and needing to fit in better, they brought it back later on though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp



Never try to fit in after being acquired. Be what they acquired.


Sony had a policy: games are implemented in C++, no ifs, ands, or buts. Once you're acquired, you play by the parent's rules.

That said, they did sneak Scheme (specifically, Racket) in the back door, by making their C++ engine data-driven and using Racket programs to generate and munge the data consumed by the engine.


Naturally a policy only added after PlayStation 2, as PlayStation 1 only did C and Assembly, being famously the first devkit to offer C support.

Also the SPUs on the Playstation 3 could in theory be programmed in C, but really only Assembly was usable for the goals of using them.

Finally, some Playstation Studios also use Unity with C#.


Given the policy, simply don't acquire stuff not written in C++, and the people working on it not in C++. Unless it's competition and you're trying to bury it or something. Otherwise it doesn't make sense buy an operation and its staff, and then change their tooling and have them rework everything.


They were a hitmaker for Sony before the acquisition. The cost of a forced transition was perceived as worth it (and probably was; Uncharted and TLOU made more money than all their previous titles put together).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: