raianmr / raytracing

Implementations of a simple ray tracer in all the languages I'm at least half-decent in.

Ray Tracing

This repo is meant to host implementations of the simple ray tracer from RTOW in all the languages that I'm at least half-decent in. A ray tracer is a perfect candidate for language anthologies IMO for a couple of reasons,

1. Most similar endeavors that I've come across are done with simple algorithms that rarely span multiple files. This flattens out the differences between some languages e.g., C and C++.
2. The ray tracer from RTOW is especially fun in that you get to play with all kinds of polymorphism to your heart's content. I can't remember the last time I saw a generic implementation of FizzBuzz that makes justified use of operator overloading.
3. I try to follow the idioms and conventions specific to the languages to the best of my ability. I think a ray tracer written this way is a decent way to benchmark languages, as opposed to making 1:1 copies of some original code snippet and ultimately just measuring the performance of runtimes.
4. I just really, really like these books. The first one was the most fun I've ever had with any programming book, period.

None of the implementations are complete, and I haven't actually gone through all the books yet. But I hope to get done with 5+ languages by the end of 2023.

Line-up

1. C++ (g++)
2. Python (CPython)
3. Go (gc)
4. TypeScript (Deno)
5. C# (.NET Core)
6. A single docker-compose.yml to build, run, and benchmark all versions.
7. Output in SVG instead of PPM for ease of sharing and viewing?
8. Rust? (rustc)
9. Clojure? (JVM)
10. Haskell? (GHC)