Comment by guerrilla

19 days ago

As a hardcore C programmer and zealot myself... How in the hell can you be productive like that? C is a systems programming language, not an application programming language, let alone relevant to the levels of abstraction you'd want in game development.

That said, "I am dead" is a very real video game indeed... and his arguments are very sound. I also can't stand C++. I disagree with him on Java though. The core language of Java is actually super simple, like C.

18 comments

guerrilla

Reply
tuhgdetzhh  19 days ago

I think the productivity question hinges on what you count as the language versus the ecosystem. Very few nontrivial games are written in "just C". They are written in C plus a large pile of bespoke libraries, code generators, asset pipelines, and domain-specific conventions. At that point C is basically a portable assembly language with a decent macro system, and the abstraction lives outside the language. That can work if you have strong architectural discipline and are willing to pay the upfront cost. Most teams are not.

I agree on C++ being the worst of both worlds for many people. You get abstraction, but also an enormous semantic surface area and footguns everywhere. Java is interesting because the core language is indeed small and boring in a good way, much closer to C than people admit. The productivity gains mostly come from the standard library, GC, and tooling rather than clever language features. For games, the real disagreement is usually about who controls allocation, lifetime, and performance cliffs, not syntax.

  • guerrilla  19 days ago

    > I agree on C++ being the worst of both worlds for many people. You get abstraction, but also an enormous semantic surface area and footguns everywhere.

    Not only that, but who even knows C++? It keeps changing. Every few years "standard practice" is completely different. Such a waste of energy.

    > Java is interesting because the core language is indeed small and boring in a good way, much closer to C than people admit.

    I know. I used to be a Java hater, but then I learned it and it's alright... except the whole no-unsigned-integers thing. That still bothers me but it's just aesthetic really.

    • nayuki  18 days ago

      > no-unsigned-integers [...] still bothers me

      I like the lack of unsigned integers in Java. It simplifies the language while only removing a tiny bit of functionality. You can emulate almost all unsigned math using signed operations, whether you use a wider bit width or even the same bit width. The only really tricky operations are unsigned division and unsigned parseInt()/toString(), which Java 8 added to smooth things over.

      https://www.nayuki.io/page/unsigned-int-considered-harmful-f...

      1 reply →

direwolf20  19 days ago

You have to try it. You can write anything you want in C. Or assembler. It's hardly going to be very productive but... productivity is greater than zero, and the more you try the better you get. Rollercoaster Tycoon was written by hand in assembly, as were all NES and SNES games including ones like Earthbound and A Link to the Past — and SNES assembly isn't nearly as nice as x64.

  • uecker  19 days ago

    Ah, the C++ guy who think you need all the features of C++ to be efficient... Many people of people are super productive in C. There is a cost, but this is usually just some initial overhead to identify / write some libraries. In a larger project this initial overhead is irrelevant.

    • direwolf20  18 days ago

      If someone is using a C++ feature it's because they think the feature is better than not using it. std::string lets you treat strings as easily as ints — subject to a run–time cost. You can make libraries that make strings easier to use in C, but you can't make one that makes them as easy as ints.

      3 replies →

Andrex  19 days ago

> The core language of Java is actually super simple, like C.

Not being facetious, but couldn't you say that about almost any language? What makes you say it about Java?

giancarlostoro  19 days ago

Were not most games back in the day in C?