Spacewar! Lives Again 143
hws writes "A DEC PDP1 emulator running the original version of Spacewar! is online here.
A group at MIT created a PDP1 emulator in Java. The original Spacewar! sources were assembled with a PDP1 Assembler written in Pearl.
The emulator, assembler and game sources are available at this site.
For those of you too young to remember, Spacewar! is probably the first video game and was done back in 1962. It and the scene that spawned it were extensively covered in Steven Levy's book - Hackers."
Hackers - GREAT! (Score:2)
Nice Black Screen (Score:1)
Atari VCS version was better! (Score:1)
This version was more playable than this, but then again so is anything not written in Java. The only issue here is that the graphics are more accurate.
Is it me, or is Java the most overhyped, unstable, resource hungy idea to enter this industry in 10 years. Not everyone has an up-to-date processor.
Is it just me.... (Score:1)
Strange.
The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
Where was computing in 1962? (Score:1)
I would think that 1962 is very early to have display capabilities beyond text. When was the first computer where you actually could control pixels like that?
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:3)
Ahhh! (Score:1)
NP
Re:Ahhh! (Score:1)
- Robin
So was the version that ran on my XT! (Score:1)
times better as well. The ships could (optionally)
have teleport and shield capabilities and had
two different modes of fire and there was AI,
so it was possible to have a 1-player game.
Much more fun than hitting the thrust a bit so
the 2nd player goes crashing into the planet
first.
This was just... disappointing.
And yes, java IS the most overhyped, unstable
resource hungry idea to enter the industry in
the last 10 years. Even when you DO have an
up to date processor (the java spacewar runs like
crap on the 700MHz dual PIII I'm sitting in
front of now, which is running that other
overhyped unstable, resource hungry idea that,
well, any
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
Spacewar also emulated in MESS (Score:3)
Executables and source are available for Mac, DOS, Windows and some Unix flavors, I believe.
Check it out: http://mess.emuverse.com
-A.
---
Re:Spacewar? I think NOT. (Score:1)
...but Spacewar is the next big thing. It will become the Game Of Choice for a new generation in a new Millennium...
'There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.'
Goethe
Re:Ahhh! (Score:2)
Are you serious? PEARL is a real language, and is certainly not new. I wish I knew a little more about it myself, but here's something from FOLDOC:
I suppose you thought he meant PERL, which didn't turn up until much later (1985 or so?). Give the guy some credit, people do make spelling mistakes, but it's the facts which are important. Maybe you should check yours before criticising next time.
Anyone remember the DOS version? (Score:1)
quite some time ago... it had a lot more
commands, including I think 3 weapons, the
ability to warp, and both ships looked very
different from each other.. one looked sort of
like
/--\
| /
|O-
| \
\--/
Re:Spacewar? I think NOT. (Score:1)
Wow, so origional. (Score:1)
Re:Atari VCS version was better! (Score:1)
Uh, I'm afraid you missed the point. This is a port of the _original_ Spacewar. Of course the Atari knock-off that came more than 13 years later is going to have more options. But who cares? There are a billion Spacewars clones. I used to play an online version back in the BBS days. The point is that the original is history. It literally jumpstarted the video game industry. Look here [emuunlim.com] if you want to read about Spacewar's legacy.
You missed the point with java, too. Yes, it's bloated. But so is everything Windows and at least Java is secure.Not able to fly away from the thing? (Score:1)
Re:Where was computing in 1962? (Score:3)
Re:Where was computing in 1962? (Score:2)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
! (Score:1)
Re:Where was computing in 1962? (Score:3)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Spacewar? I think NOT. (Score:1)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
SpaceWar (Score:1)
Re:Anyone remember the DOS version? (Score:2)
The version with:
* thrust/turn L/turn R/reverse-thrust
for steering, plus hyperspace
* torps/phasers for firepower, ea. costing
energy
* separate, transferrable weapon/energy power?
and a star w/ a planet orbitting it, perhaps w/
gravity?
Mmmmmmm. That was GOOD stuff.
Hmmm. Wonder if the source for that version is available... the AI opponents were both a little silly to the point that you could beat them firing just once in the game, or sometimes exactly zero times (with the sun/planet on)...
Re:Is it just me.... (Score:1)
Re:Anyone remember the DOS version? (Score:1)
xpilot! (Score:2)
Re:Java, Java, Java (Score:1)
appletviewer http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/s
Dumbass - So what? (Score:1)
The other week I saw on TV a experement to see if it was possible (with the aviable technology of the day) for the stones for stonehedeg to be moved from the quary site to there destination. (and two separate groups, doing it differently did it)
Of course we wouldnt move big rocks the same way now, and the purpose of this was not to make a new and cool spacewar - it was to do it exactly as it had been done back then. And the did, and its cool.
As for java, the language is cool. The VM stuff is equaly cool, though less refined. It will, in time, prove to be one of the most significant computer things of all time.
Re:Java, Java, Java (Score:1)
I'll admit, its slow on my machine, but then again, so is anything written in Scheme. You can't have everything.
Re:Anyone remember the DOS version? (Score:1)
Pong as the first computer game (Score:1)
of causing the lights of the computer to light up sequentially based on the position of the ball. Using switches, you could send the ball back on its journey. SpaceWars was definitely the first worthwhile computer game.
Opensource and network it! :) (Score:1)
author and see if we could get the source.. we
could port it to X and make it support network
play
Re:Opensource and network it! :) (Score:1)
Bill Seiler, who lived (lives?) at
317 Lockweood Lane, Scotts Valley, CA 95066
He also, according to the notes, handed out
source for $30 in 1986. So.... we need to
track him down...
Re:xpilot! (Score:1)
rw-rw-rw-
Re:SpaceWar (Score:1)
--or is it for zShell?
Re:Ahhh! (Score:1)
Hate to tell you but you should check out some facts too. The site even states that it was written in perl (as if there were any doubt).
Re:Dumbass - So what? (Score:2)
I didn't used to think this, but I have to admit that the language IS cool. It does lack a lot, but oh well -- so does everything except Lisp.
The VM, on the other hand, is ridiculous. Why did they go and use bytecodes, the single most inefficient and insecure technology out there? Wordcodes would have been faster, smaller, and more secure; abstract syntax trees would have been faster and more secure (smaller in transit, too, but they take more memory to compile than the basic bytecode interpreter).
An example of AST technology is Juice and ANDF.
Hangs on Netscape 4.61 (Score:1)
I wrote a clone of it - without knowing... (Score:2)
While in high school in Germany, I wrote my own version of it that I called "Grav" - using Turbo Pascal 3.0 on old 4.77 MHz Dos PCs, using CGA graphics and "incredible" (eek) sound effects.
It was quite a hit with school mates and we spent a lot of school breaks competing with each other on it. I also distributed it as freeware, including its (horrible) pascal source code. In those days, you had to order free- and shareware disks through mail order, if anyone cares to remember that...
Anyway, only later when I had my game finished I found "Spacewar", which (I think) was written in C and had a much better keyboard control code.
Nevertheless, I liked my own version and still think that Grav did not have to hide from Dos' Spacewar in any way.
(* I think that this series of wonderful articles actually made me consider studying computer science in the first place.)
------------------
tracking down the author (Score:1)
There are quite a few William Seilers, though, and some bills in other states.
I'm now looking for a homepage...
whine whine whine (Score:1)
Am I the only one who is getting sick and tired of the constant Java bashing that goes on here? "A pain to write in"? Good fucking grief! Compared to what I had to write in before (C, C++) it's a godsend! God damn if I ever go back to dealing with a language that easily lets you corrupt the heap, horrible (and easy to create) memory leaks, crappy window toolkits (MFC? X/Motif? YUCK!).
Just get over it already! If you don't like it, don't use it, but your incessant bitching about it just clutters up otherwise interesting discussions. If anyone says either the word "Sun" or "Java" in a sentence, it turns into a bitch session. Slashdot is looking less and less like a good forum to have good technical discussions. More and more like an asylum of whiney losers.
I played the arcade version of this recently (Score:1)
It was quite an interesting exhibition, if you made allowances for the drool factor. An Apple I (with a label stating it had an Intel processor...), a piece of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, and a few other interesting bits and pieces. It was just so depressing that nobody was looking at the difference engine, and there were hundreds of people crowded around a ho-hum industrial robot that had be programmed to "dance" in time to some crappy 70's disco music.
Pearl? (Score:1)
Re:Not able to fly away from the thing? (Score:1)
Yes, it's just you. :) (Score:1)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:2)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:2)
Re:whine whine whine (Score:2)
Re:Dumbass - So what? (Score:1)
Anyone remember VTtrek ? (Score:1)
I wonder if anyone ever ported that or did a TOPS emulator.
Macka
PDP emulation---screw space wars, run V7 UNIX! (Score:3)
Re:Hangs on Netscape 4.61 (Score:1)
try it.
Spacewar (Score:1)
Anyhow here [gamesdomain.co.uk] is a link to an even different version.
It's in assembly :( (Score:1)
else talking about certain aspects of the
source, and it seems to be x86 assembly
So maybe a complete rewrite is in order...
Obligatory Slashdot bashing? (Score:1)
like a good forum to have good technical discussions. More and more like an asylum of whiney losers.
Is there a word yet for this phenomenon, this
odd little "obligatory" slashdot-bashing that has become commonplace whenever anyone even slightly disagrees with a post?
Seriously, how many of you are expecting me to finish my saying "Slashdot used to have great, respectful, logical discussion but has no degnerated to..."
What the hell? We need a word for this.
Marc
Re:SpaceWar (Score:1)
Re:Learn to spell Perl, moron! (Score:1)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
But, Nolan Bushnell did create it!
Re:Not able to fly away from the thing? (Score:1)
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Re:Learn to spell Perl, moron! (Score:1)
Yes, there is a Pearl, but the 'Spacewar' site
says the assembler was written in PERL, not Pearl.
(This is in the 'readme' file)
Java (Score:2)
I'll also say this: I'm trying it in netscape 4.08, and I know that the Netscape jvm bites. Makes me sorry I stopped using iCab
That said: ack! I'm running a 300Mhz G3 processor here. I can run Unreal Tournament without it being too much of a slideshow. To have _spacewar_ being unplayably slow and totally unresponsive is just disgusting. Blech! And yet I am delighted to have seen it- I read 'Hackers' too but I'd never seen the actual game. It was worth the hassle to actually see those little shapes and know that this was the game that started it all
I downloaded the class file in hopes of running it on a better JVM sometime. I freaked out when it was only 4,615 bytes, sure that I'd got the wrong file. Then did a doubletake... _wait_ a minute... *grin* *hehehehe* funny what this industry does to your sense of proportion, isn't it?
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
I agree, especially as no one has ever written an application of substance in Java.
Implementations of the language are limited, restricting the language to be used for simple applets, and backoffice and servlet development. Sun still can't get the GUI framework right, by all accounts Swing has serious scalability problems apparently partly due to the limitations of the inflexible (if elegant on paper, and great for small apps) threading model of Java.
The only sizeable shrinkwrapped apps written in Java that I know of are the ones I've help do and Java IDEs, Java isn't used to implement any windows apps I use and isn't relied on in the upcoming *nix desktop environments. Implementations simply aren't competitive, (and I'm not interested in benchmarks I'm interested in substantial apps that are in wide spread use)
Also the language itself can be horribly obtuse at times even for extremely common tasks:
myVector.elementAt( ((Integer)myVector.elementAt( i )).intValue() )
instead of:
mVector[mVector[i]]
And don't tell me you can't corrupt the stack and leak resources in Java, because after a few thousand lines of code it's hard not too (and in different ways on different VMs)!
Java does have it uses, I think it's a better language for teaching than Pascal and a better language for developing business logic apps than visual basic.
If you want to develop a large app C is the proven choice, C++ is the Johnny come lately that is proving itself and ADA is used by those with no choice in the matter.
Java is nothing more than a dumbed down, simplified C++, it doesn't advance the state of the art for that I suggest looking at Haskell which is pushing the boundaries of Comp Sci.
Anyway that's a few off the cuff remarks from someone who actually managed to ship a shrink wrapped Java app and who has lived to tell the tale. I really haven't given a proper critique of the language and its implementations but if you search previous posts on Slashdot you should come across some by a clued up Dylan advocate who has given some very nice summaries on the shortcomings of Java.
Re:Obligatory Slashdot bashing? (Score:1)
Hmm.. someone complained about the java bashing, you bitch about the slashdot bashing. I bitch about your meta-bash-bitching. Where will it end! (Hmm.. maybe there's your term? Meta-bashing?)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
Re:Ahhh! (Score:1)
NP
service_accountnospam,please@yahoo.com
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the new version of JDEdwards OneWorld accounting software, a large package by any count, comes in multiple flavors (same source code - cross compilers), including everything running in Java.
...phil
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Where was computing in 1962? (Score:1)
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Just because I'm being obnoxious and arrogant doesn't mean I don't want to be corrected if I'm mistaken.
the new version of JDEdwards OneWorld accounting software
Never heard of it, will keep a look out for it. "new version" you say, has it been released?
What products does it compete with?
multiple flavors (same source code - cross compilers), including everything running in Java.
Cross compiling normally refers to using a compiler on machine A to generate machine code for another type of machine, machine B, but I think I know what you mean.
Well done to them, it can be a fair bit of work getting Java source to compile and run right under different java compilers and VMs. (Different OSs too? Do they have a Mac version? I hear VMs suck especially hard on the Mac).
Re:Spacewar also emulated in MESS (Score:1)
Re:Yes, it's just you. :) (Score:1)
Re:Not able to fly away from the thing? (Score:1)
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Admittedly, they aren't making office suites or anything here, but I still think it shows that there may be some untapped use in Java.
The beautiful thing about Java and the point that everybody seems to be missing is that you compile it once and it works anywhere on any machine that has the power to run the app and a VM installed. I don't think anybody can shoot that down with a comparison to C.
Wordcodes (Score:3)
They're faster and smaller because there are so many more possible ones -- the VM can have many more primitives which are more tailored to the job at hand. They're more secure for the same reason; it's possible to design an instruction set which does not have as many illegal combinations of primitives.
You still need a security manager, of course, but the verifier can be much smaller and quicker.
Secure in what sense?
Secure in the sense that a verifier has to watch for much fewer conditions, and is thus simpler to build. Once you've built the verifier, of course, both systems have the same security.
An example of a wordcoded system is threaded Forth. I don't know whether anyone has made a portable executable format out of wordcodes.
-Billy
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Come on guys, Java (like just about any other language) has some good points and some bad points. It isn't really a general purpose language in the sense that C/C++ is so the trade offs are different. If you're on the right side of those trade-offs it can make you life a lot easier (wrt C/whatever); on the wrong side it can make your life miserable.
Please lets not have yet another discussion degenerate into a stupid language war full of pointless statements by people who either don't know what they are talking about or should know better than to get into it once the temperature is up, ok?
peace,
S.
Won't go fast enough over Internet (Score:1)
Re:Won't go fast enough over Internet (Score:1)
Re:Hangs on Netscape 4.07 too (Score:1)
We're so fortunate! (Score:1)
Who knows, several hundred years from now, the history books may portray Commander Robert Malda as an industry inspiration, great innovator, and even political leader. History is sometimes confused to fit political agendas.
-------
CAIMLAS
Versions of MESS (Score:1)
Not that it matters.
-A.
---
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Yes, 'cross compiler' was not entirely appropriate, but I couldn't think of a better term. The source code, from a single compile, results in binaries that can run on x86, Java, or AS/400.
...phil
Netscape sucks, stop blaming Java (Score:1)
The Linux community is held hostage by Netscape and their implementation (until Mozilla and OJI
frees them) It's not very scientific to have a single datapoint, Netscape's Java implementation, and therefore conclude, Java sucks.
Netscape 4 sucks speedwise, and stability wise. It has resource leaks, segfaults, and its Java VM doesn't even have a JIT. Java on Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, OS/2, and AIX runs very nicely. Only Swing is still a little slow, and even that is wholly dependendant on how you use it. (evidence: jEdit vs JEditorPane)
Try running the applet under IBM JDK1.1.8 appletviewer on Linux, it's about 30-50 times faster than the VM in Netscape and much more resource efficient.
Now try writing a PDP-1 emulator in pure PERL and let's see how fast it runs.
I've been coding Perl since 1991 and Java since 1993, and have mucho experiencing optimizing both Perl and Java code. All the anti-Java bashing that goes on here is pure FUD. You have clueless idiots bashing bytecode interpretation, and then cheerfully boost Perl, Python, PHP, TCL, etc,
claiming that parse tree evaluation will be faster than optimized bytecode/JIT, and bashing Java's thread model (when in fact, the fault lies in Linux's poor threading model compared to Solaris, OS/2, BeOS, or NT)
There are plenty of benchmarks out there now showing Java JIT's being within a fact of 50-80% of C on execution speed. Volano Report shows that some VMs/OSes can scale to thousands of simultanaeous threads (4000+). I personally ported a mini-raytracer to Java from C and only lost about 20% execution speed.
No doubt, Java GUI components still need more optimization. But on the other hand, the lack of a Microsoft Office competitor written in Java is not evidence. The desktop app markup is pretty locked up right now, most companies are developing Web/HTML versions of tradition apps like email/address book/form processing/hr/billing/info mgmt/etc, so the fact of the matter is, the number of "desktop apps" being written in C/C++ is also on the way down.
(why waste time doing C++ Forms Database, when you can develop much quicker by using HTML and a scripting language?)
Why wasn't Slashdot written in C++? Hmm..
Re:Anyone remember the DOS version? (Score:2)
Yeah, I remember that =) One of the few games I had for my old IBM XT. Great little computer... I think it had DOS version 2.something... I even had a version of Microsoft Works for it. I think it was the best version of MS works I've ever used, too ;)
Re:Where was computing in 1962? (Score:2)
I once dismantled an Atari Asteroids machine to see how it worked (I wish I kept it, damn it!), and it did more or less the same thing. The only thing it had that I suspect the Digital PDP didn't was specialized circuitry which controlled the horizontal and vertical using a simple "stepping" state machine. That is, you would program the start point of the electron gun as (x,y) in two registers, and a counter "stepper" in two registers. A counter would increment, and as it hit the values in the stepper registers, it would either increment or decrement the (x,y) value, changing the value of the electron gun. It was a fairly primitive mechanism for doing line drawings on the display, offloading that task from the 6502 processor that powered the machine. Quite clever, really.
Of course this is all from memory; I've long lost the schematics and the video game motherboard. Makes me long for the days when I used to do embedded code...
Re:Hackers - GREAT! (Score:1)
John Harris, one of those profiled in Hackers, has begged to differ on numerous occasions.
Apparently, whenever there were conflicting versions of what happened, Levy told the more sensational tale.
John still lurks from time to time in comp.sys.atari.8bit, and a few years ago released a new 6502/65816 assembler for the Atari 8-bit line.
---
Re:Ahhh! (Score:1)
Re:The FIRST video game??? (Score:1)
As another point of reference, Pong was actually a ripoff of the Magnavox Odyssey, although Pong beat it to market. (Magnavox was demonstrating the game at various tradeshows, and apparently Bushnell saw it. The Odyssey was actually an analog system, tho.)
--
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
"can't corrupt stack and leak resources"
Please tell me how you can corrupt the stack in Java. Meaning, expose it to a buffer overflow attack ala Java. Or is it possible you don't
know what you're talking about?
In Java, you can only "leak resources" by holding onto them. However, these leaks don't build up and usually amount to a waste of memory that is constant. Until long running C servers which can chew up all the ram in a machine.
The only "true memory leaks" in Java are related to JNI implementation bugs in classes like java.awt.Image, and java.awt.Dialog, which have been fixed.
I wouldn't call Java "dumbed down", I would call it "a more coherent, organized version of C++". And since you mention Haskell, care to point us to any code you've written, or are you simply blowing smoke out your ass.
And if you want to talk about blowing C++ out of the water, let's look at Eiffel, shall we?
Re:whine whine whine (Score:1)
Please tell me how you can corrupt the stack in Java. Meaning, expose it to a buffer overflow attack ala Java.
Hmm meant to say heap, makes no difference. All JVMs I've worked with (Sun,Netscape and MS implementations) are buggy and I haven't found it hard to write code that (unintentionally) crashes them, probably due 'exploiting' stack/heap corruption or dangling pointer references in JVM code. I'm not talking about the language here but the VM implementations.
In Java, you can only "leak resources" by holding onto them.
You can get garbage collectors for C/C++ too (Great Circle), which leaves you in the same position of only leaking resources when you hold onto them.
Personally I prefer predictable runtime performance (can we say no garbage collection) and still do it manually (using a malloc debugger to find memory leaks). I admit having to do this is pretty sad, but at least in C++ I have the option.
However, these leaks don't build up and usually amount to a waste of memory that is constant.
Rubbish.
Until long running C servers which can chew up all the ram in a machine.
Huh?
The only "true memory leaks" in Java are related to JNI implementation bugs in classes like java.awt.Image, and java.awt.Dialog, which have been fixed.
Never mind the memory leaks in the VMs.
And since you mention Haskell, care to point us to any code you've written, or are you simply blowing smoke out your ass.
I haven't written any commercial Haskell code, there aren't any good Haskell compilers, a good optimizing Haskell compiler is quite possibly decades away. My point was that as a language the beauty (simplicity, readability) of Haskell is first rate, far superior to Java and C++.
(Haskell isn't perfect though I suspect many problems will always be best solved with an imperative language).
And if you want to talk about blowing C++ out of the water, let's look at Eiffel, shall we?
Haven't really had a serious look at it. I'm not aware of any good compiler implementations, or any significant apps. Post and pre conditions seem like good ideas though.
Java does have its place, servlets, business logic and e-commerce programming come to mind.
However for developing shrinkwrap style apps in a competitive environment (my area of interest) it is a proven failure.
Does anyone know where I could get any of these? (Score:2)
Re:Wordcodes (Score:2)
Just having the code be 16-bits wide neither allows you to have more primitives (which you can do with multi-byte sequences of bytecode), nor does it "not have as many illegal combinations of primitives". Certainly FORTH allows (even in 16-bit implementations) for a huge number of "illegal combinations".
Furthermore, there is every reason to expect that wordcodes would be larger than bytecodes, since even the most common primitives are forced to use twice as many bits.
If x-codes were fundamentally better for larger x, don't you think people would have noticed that by now?
For equivalent security to that provided by Java, wordcodes would still require a wordcode verifier. The verifier does a whole lot more than check for illegal codes. It has to analyze the code and make sure every possible path results in the same stack depth. Wordcodes don't help with this sort of problem.
Re:Wordcodes (Score:2)
I have. It's one of the things that just about every Forth programmer touts as the Great Thing about Forth. And yes, I know that most modern Forths use 32-bit cells; in fact, many modern Forths are switching to call threading rather than token threading, because it allows for inlined optimization. This is often an easy choice, because a call for many processors takes up 32 bits anyhow.
Just having the code be 16-bits wide neither allows you to have more primitives (which you can do with multi-byte sequences of bytecode),
At a serious cost in speed.
nor does it "not have as many illegal combinations of primitives". Certainly FORTH allows (even in 16-bit implementations) for a huge number of "illegal combinations".
You're ignoring what I said -- I said that it's possible to design an instruction set which does not have as many illegal combinations of primitives. I didn't say that Forth was it -- of course not. Forth was designed for totally different purposes -- security doesn't even show up on the list.
Furthermore, there is every reason to expect that wordcodes would be larger than bytecodes, since even the most common primitives are forced to use twice as many bits.
That's obvious. What's not obvious is that since there are many more wordcodes, the most common sequences of bytecodes can be encoded in a single, preoptimised, wordcode. This is also how a certain amount of increased security is possible.
If x-codes were fundamentally better for larger x, don't you think people would have noticed that by now?
Why do you think they haven't? I'm not sharing qabbalistic secrets here. Optimising wordcodes is a new science; using them is old.
For equivalent security to that provided by Java, wordcodes would still require a wordcode verifier. The verifier does a whole lot more than check for illegal codes. It has to analyze the code and make sure every possible path results in the same stack depth. Wordcodes don't help with this sort of problem.
Of course. You're absolutely right. All I claimed is that the analysis was less complex. I admit that not only did I not give numbers, though, I don't even HAVE any. To the best of my knowledge, nobody's ever written a security-critical system using wordcodes -- but then Java's the only bytecode-based system I know of.
My preference is to use neither -- I like abstract syntax trees.
-Billy