The GameDev Lounge 00000011

[DarkGrievous7145]

True, or they write libraries based on what they've seen. indeed using high level languages is re-using other's code. Back when Machine Code/Assembly, and C were the norm, even the most basic of functions like printing lines technically didn't exist, only the capacity to implement them. I wouldn't strictly consider the use of high level languages depending on anther's code, though. Using someone else's sprite library, or game engine, or multiplayer API, though.... And again, I never said experts do not ever refer to some source of help, but they shouldn't have to do that constantly, unlike a novice or a hacker would. A novice programmer is still learning stuff, and a hacker specializes in finding exploitable sections of code. Let's take the example of a spritesheet parser. An expert programmer, or at least one that fully understands the concept and how to implement it could theoretically write this class/function from scratch, maybe referring to the language or API specs of the language and/or libraries they're using. A beginner programmer, or one who doesn't yet understand the implementation of sprite sheets, is probably going to follow a tutorial on how to make one, or grab a library or engine that comes with that feature. A hacker may or may not understand how to implement a sprite sheet parser, but their end goal is to take the one that some one else wrote, and find a place and a method of adding their own code to it, or extracting data from it. I'm not saying they don't, but expert programmers, or at least once they've fully understood a concept, should be able to implement that almost entirely by referring to their own memory. I'm not saying any way is better, but I do, personally, feel quite inferior with how little I can do independently of another person or their code.

Scripting is only scripting when it's 'small' and 'simple', depending on your scripting language and/or its interpreter, you can write things that constitute an actual program. There's a few .bat files (or collections, even) out there that cross the line between simply 'scripting', and actually programming. JavaScriot, by definition, is a scripting language. Most of the JavaScript code you'll encounter on websites is more like programs than scripts or macros, however.