When people suggest good ideas, they often forget one thing: How much does
it cost in speed to implement those ideas?
  In raytracing speed is a critical element. One of the main developing
issues in povray has been the speed performance. Povray 3.0 was a lot faster
than 2.2. Povray 3.1e is a lot faster than 3.0 (at least in sors and lathes).
  You mention that there are actually two kinds of sor objects in povray,
and you insinuate that it's a bad thing. The reason why there are two
different sor objects is explicitly the rendering speed. If you need only
a simpler sor, you can use a much faster version of it.
  Suppose now that we don't have different kind of objects, but just one
"superobject", which you can define in any way. Do you think that this
object will render even nearly as fast as a highly optimized sor object?
  You also comment about the heightfield object. Do you really know why
the heighfield is so limited (for example, you can't wrap the heightfield
around a sphere or whatever)? Yes, the answer is again: speed. The height-
field object in the actual form is very fast to render since many
optimizations can be made due to these limitations. The heightfield object
renders much faster than a general triangle mesh object with the same number
of triangles. And once again: I seriously doubt that the "superobject" would
render even nearly as fast as the heightfield.
  So the reason for the limitations is not that they didn't know how to do
it, but they wanted to do it fast.
  And what about the object-oriented scripting language? The main change in
this would be just a change in the syntax. A change from a clever,
straightforward, BASIC-like script language to a cryptic object-oriented
language.
  Instead of saying "object { MySphere rotate y*20 }" you would say
somenting like "Sphere1=object { MySphere }; Sphere1.rotate(y*20)". There's
no difference between the two things. Just a little bit different syntax.
And all the OO-fanatics are happy because the can "use" "methods"...
  I'm not saying that OO is a bad thing. No, it's a very good thing.
  The problem with it is that you need to learn to think "object orientedly".
  An object oriented approach could be fine in the povscript language, but
not as a substitute, but as an alternative.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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