Lobster, Programming Languages, and Game Engines with Wouter van Oortmerssen - Conversation #5

►Lesson Description: In this conversation I speak with Wouter Van Oortmerssen who continues an amazing career in programming language, compiler, and game engine development. Wouter has developed programming languages like the AmigaE in the 90s, Bla, and Aardappel while completing his Ph.D. Wouter during this time also worked on the Cube Engine 1 and 2, which was an open source engine that folks still use to this day -- focused on simplicity, which ultimately allows for complexity (e.g. real-time editing in multiplayer, and emergent behavior in games). Currently Wouter is focused on his Lobster programming language which is powering VoxRay Games upcoming title 'VoxLands' (link below to Steam). In this conversation we cover all of this and more, and even do a live preview of the Lobster programming language, better understanding the language design and how it empowers developers. Through this conversation I learned a lot about how to improve as a programmer (experimenting with languages, finding open source projects to refactor as an exercise, and to focus on simplicity and minimalism) -- I'm sure you will also learn something new! So sit back, relax, and listen to Wouter's career, and then we'll do a deep dive into Lobster at the end!

Please check out the following links from the talk:
Attributions:

0:00:00 Interview Teaser
0:00:50 Introduction
0:01:42 Story of introduction
0:03:10 Obfuscated C Competition
0:03:52 Sloppy - Code analysis tool
0:08:00 First Programs with BBC Micro
0:10:22 Commodore programming days
0:12:39 Was learning assembly helpful?
0:17:00 College side projects
0:18:50 Why is it hard to adopt new programming languages?
0:22:40 Amiga E - Popular compiler written in Assembly!
0:27:40 False, the language that inspired BrainF****
0:31:20 Bla Language - Functional programming language for masters thesis
0:35:00 Will we see more specialized languages?
0:37:15 Aardappel - A tree-rewriting language with graphical interface (Ph.D. thesis)
0:44:10 The Cube Game Engine
0:48:00 Real time editing in-game of Cube -- a few years ahead of Minecraft
0:53:00 Cube Engine 2 advancements
0:54:30 Crytek and how Wouter got his job
0:56:45 Teaching at SMU Guildhall and teaching compilers
0:59:00 Joining Google and working on WASM
1:00:30 VoxRay Games - Wouter's studio creating VoxLands (Built on Lobster)
1:04:15 Mike's first impression of the Lobster Programming Language
1:05:40 Understanding Lobster Features and Design
1:29:14 Live Coding - Installing and running Lobster
1:57:45 Rapid Fire Interview Questions to Close
2:02:00 Closing and shoutout for VoxLands on Steam

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[alst]

Wow, Wouter has had a really interesting career!

[twenty-fifth]

Hey, just a heads up for Linux users!
Lobster does build fairly easily out of the box, BUT you will still need to set the path to the exe in the /bin directory if you want your command line to recognize the arguments globally. Some languages do this out of the box and others do not have to do that. But this is probably going to be helpful both when running examples and quickly iterating on code!

Otherwise, it is just as simple as getting the repo and building! This is one of the easier make/cmake projects I built, so look forward to it! <3

[finlaymetcalfe]

First time watching one of these. Really interesting conversation. Would love to see some insights on game engine architecture from Wouter.

[androth]

i tried lobster a couple years ago. it's a great 'batteries included' type of language. i just, at the time, didn't find the pythonesque syntax agreeable.

[LukeAGuest]

I learnt assembly on Amiga and used AmigaE a lot, there are new E compilers not just the original assembly one.

My advice is, don't learn C or C++, find a language which helps you find errors, so strongly typed, not one which will basically force you in hours of debugging and wasting your life.

[GaryChike]

I remember asking Wouter if this is a good beginning language and he said no. And since there is dearth of tutorials on Lobster, this language is essentially built for more experienced developers that has experience in another language. 🦞