Multiple dispatch and ECS

[ShalokShalom]

Hi there :)

I am currently researching ECS and multiple dispatch. It seems like a match made in heaven - did you encounter any issues, that you relate specifically to that combination?

Do you think its a good thing, or wouldn't you do it again?

Thanks in advance

[louisponet]

I think that at some point some part of the code has to be explicit about what has to happen. I think with ecs this naturally and, imo, correctly falls onto the data. The dynamic dispatch of Julia then allows for functions to be specialized depending on the data that is pulled out of the ecs at a certain point. Tl;dr I agree

[louisponet]

To expand on whether I'd do it again, I think Overseer is still one of my favourite things that I've created, even after years of high perf work in other languages

[ShalokShalom]

Being naive here for a moment: What can an ECS do, that Julia with multiple dispatch can't on its own?

[louisponet]

ECS is merely a particular way of handling and thinking about data. You can just imagine it as a big table with sparse columns. The rows are represented by entities. Systems are then basically queries/transformations that operate on a specific set of those columns. I think multiple dispatch just makes creating an ECS quite smooth sailing, rather than an ECS doing something special/new on the fundamental level

[ShalokShalom]

So, if I just use multiple dispatch the way you describe it, I create an ECS architecture - but why did you create Overseer then, what value does it add?