stupid question: if palib was maintained, would you use it?

[Deleted member 591971]

it is just a question plz do not kill me

 

[FAST6191]

I don't know how many homebrew authors there are that frequent the forums, though the lack of replies probably says most things there.

For those following along at home and those that might not have been around back then but are somehow making code for the DS.

On the DS most people would have used devkitpro/devkitarm to make code*. It is fairly low level without too many niceties for those making games (if you are thinking more in general games development then think basic compiler vs SDL, though SDL and the DS is a whole other story -- the PSP largely getting an intact and relatively current port where the DS... not so much). Palib started life on player-advance which is the pa part of it ( :: PlayerAdvance.org :: , became defunct for a while so might need to go for internet archive to see how it was back then), probably the main French flash cart/emulator/scene release site at the time (logic sunrise was around but not that popular as these things go for the DS, forum gueux was rising a bit but had not peaked, don't know what dev-fr was doing, nintendomax was another but this is not my memories of the French flash cart/emulation/hacking scene). Following some drama, it gaining traction in the English speaking world (by far the dominant language for homebrew discussions), server instability and outgrowing things then http://www.palib.info/forum/ appeared on the scene and long since defunct as well.
palib then grew to encompass some nice features that while cost a bit of RAM and binary size did things that made life easier and consequently got some fans. It died off following a bit of drama, had suffered a fair bit of bloat as well, and as it was largely independently developed from devkitpro it also lagged every time that did one of its fairly radical refactorings between versions it was and in many cases still is famous for, though at least back then older versions could still be readily found so you could compile something without having to bring it into line with "modern" standards. palib's death was considered a bit of a shame but it would also not be too long before the rise of IOS and then android brought down the curtains on that phase of the DS homebrew story (turns out making money coding what you want to code/what interests you on a powerful device that allows you to code and even encourages it with all sorts of nice tools rather than looking at you like you stole something is a powerful draw).

*indeed other than the blessed/crazy few that went all in on assembly then it was straight devkitpro and those that augmented with palib that represented most things out there, quite a few however getting their start with http://www.patater.com/files/projects/manual/manual.html#id2534437 which had some interesting effects. Few went in for dslinux as a base, the various flavours of lua on the DS actually had thriving scenes doing interesting things, and while there were other languages ported ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/attempt...amming-languages-available-for-the-ds.357792/ ) they were mostly proof of concept.