is there any alternative of C++

ehsen · 2003-08-31T18:39:59

I am a newbie in game development. In my previous post many people advised me to learn C++ but you guys can understand that migrating from visual basic to C++ is a big porblem besides this i am also learning Maya so it is also a tough job. The people advised me to learn C++ because of its performance. But i have seen many games which created in vb and they work well and also its easy for me to use direct x in vb. what''s your idea if i use vb in game development. Because i think an expert vb programer is better that bad c++ programer.

For Beginners

Started by ehsen August 31, 2003 01:59 PM

24 comments, last by ehsen 20 years, 7 months ago

twix

637

August 31, 2003 02:59 PM

quote:Original post by Naku
quote:Original post by twix
Hmm? What languages have died during your lifetime?

Basic, Pascal, Fortran. I'm sure there's more aswell.

Oh really? By what standards have any of these languages "died"? Don't tell me that nobody uses them anymore. Fortran, I'm not sure about (since I never looked into it), but Basic and Pascal are obviously alive and well. It is very difficult for a language to die unless it was never very useful (or never used much) to begin with.

quote:
and after a while you'll see how bad a programming language BASIC is.

Visual Basic is significantly better than C++ for many specific uses. [EDIT: to elaborate, it's much easier and smarter to use it for complex GUIs than doing it manually with C++] I have programmed in both (though I am a bit rusty in VB since I don't have my own copy

), so I would know that very well. It's not a good idea to simply dismiss languages as useless.

[edited by - twix on August 31, 2003 4:08:22 PM]

tortoise

122

August 31, 2003 03:12 PM

quote:Original post by twix
Oh really? By what standards have any of these languages "died"? Don''t tell me that nobody uses them anymore. Fortran, I''m not sure about (since I never looked into it), but Basic and Pascal are obviously alive and well

How is Pascal alive? Who''s still using it to any extent other than supporting legacy code? It''s not even used as an educational language anymore (it''s original intent). Fortran is still used a lot in numerical analysis and other scientific oriented fields, but that''s mostly because the old codgers don''t want to learn anything else

COBOL is still used quite a lot in business.

Of course you don''t have to learn C++. Games are written in many languages: Python, C#, Java, C, assemblies, Lisp on and on. I''d say as long as you can get decent bindings to good graphics, audio and input libraries you should be fine.

But C++ is by far the most used language and that alone gives it many advantages.

twix

637

August 31, 2003 03:17 PM

quote:Original post by tortoise
How is Pascal alive? Who's still using it to any extent other than supporting legacy code?

Pascal seems to still be alive in some incarnation. The web is still full of resources, and people are using Borland's Delphi to do strange things (like writing Quake 2) =/.

[edited by - twix on August 31, 2003 4:20:57 PM]

Arild Fines

968

August 31, 2003 03:23 PM

quote:Original post by tortoise
quote:Original post by twix
Oh really? By what standards have any of these languages "died"? Don''t tell me that nobody uses them anymore. Fortran, I''m not sure about (since I never looked into it), but Basic and Pascal are obviously alive and well

How is Pascal alive?

Delphi.

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Aerolithe

122

August 31, 2003 04:58 PM

Is C still pretty active/common?
Also, I saw someone mention in another thread that C wasn''t as good as C++ because it wasnt object oriented. Would there be times when procedural would be better? Or when neither would be the best option?

bastard2k5

238

August 31, 2003 05:07 PM

If I remember correctly, C is still heavily used as an embedded and systems programming language. Or in places that cannot afford the overhead of Object-Oriented programming. As for an alternative to C++, C is still there, if you want a more minimal language. Although if you are an expert in the programming language, you will be better than any lousy programmer, no matter the languages used, because the expert programmer can solve the problem, without creating more problems. I would suggest you learning C++ at some point, because it is the industry standard, and if you become a professional game developer, there will probably be some point where you will have to create, or maintain C++ code. You don''t have to learn it now, but keep that in mind.

twix

637

August 31, 2003 05:11 PM

quote:Original post by Aerolithe
Would there be times when procedural would be better? Or when neither would be the best option?

Yes, and yes. But I do agree that C++ is better than C just because it offers more options. Being mostly a superset of C, you can choose to take advantage of its OOPness if you like, or if you prefer purely procedural code you can do that too and make use of the extra syntactical conveniences that C++ has over C. There is something of a speed difference, but for the most part it's not very important. Sometimes, of course, it's better to stick with C to eliminate the overhead.

[edited by - twix on August 31, 2003 6:26:30 PM]

tortoise

122

August 31, 2003 05:23 PM

quote:Original post by Aerolithe
Is C still pretty active/common?

Sure is. To this day many/most Unix programmers swear by it.

quote:
Also, I saw someone mention in another thread that C wasn''t as good as C++ because it wasnt object oriented.

A language''s OOness is not an indication of worth. OO is just one style of programming, it''s not the be all end all. There are cases when procedural is better, cases when OO is better, and cases where logical or functional or other paradigms are better.

quote:
Would there be times when procedural would be better? Or when neither would be the best option?

Try to seek down some of the comments Linus Torvalds has said about writing the Linux kernel in C++. C''s low levelness (it''s often called a "middle level" language) makes it ideal for systems programming (hell, it was created explicitly to write Unix) and is also good for embedded systems and such.

Anonymous

August 31, 2003 05:40 PM

Look at it this way, there are dozens of languages out there that are still in use, just like there are millions of computers around the world.

Sure 100mhz machines running windows 3.1 are still used SOMEWHERE, but people in the video game industry expect nothing less than the best for their equipment. The same should hold true for the language you choose.

Yeah, you can knock out some dinky asteroids clone in VB, or you can do some stuffy professor''s reserch in fortran or something, but who cares? If you want power, speed, convenience, features...go with a modern language like C++. For QUALITY games it''s the only choice.

cowsarenotevil

3,015

August 31, 2003 05:44 PM

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Yeah, you can knock out some dinky asteroids clone in VB, or you can do some stuffy professor''s reserch in fortran or something, but who cares? If you want power, speed, convenience, features...go with a modern language like C++. For QUALITY games it''s the only choice.

Um, huh? Are you just making that up, or do you have reason to believe any of that?

-~-The Cow of Darkness-~-

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