Easy programming language

Maybe you should define what you mean exactly with 'top notch', and what your previous experiences are in developing games, if any.

I can already tell you though that there's no such thing as a simple beginner-friendly program which allows you to make AAA quality games, and that it takes time, skill and dedication to build something decent.

This is technically contradictory in terms, and in 2 ways.
#1: Nothing AAA quality is easy. Why do you think not just anyone can make a AAA game? By AAA, I mean, “top-notch”.
#2: If such a thing did exist, you wouldn’t have to ask this question, because everyone on the face of the planet would be using it and everyone would know about it.

That is the easy and helpful answer. But if I were to answer your question literally?
A program that is easy to use and can be used to make top-notch games?

Microsoft® Visual Studio®.
It is an executable—a program or collection of programs if you will—that also happens to be called an “IDE”, and it just so happens that it is very easy to use, and has been used to make countless top-notch games.
All you have to do is write code into it and hit F5!


If you want more than that you will have to learn to ask the right questions. Since you think making games is a matter of “using a program” you have a long way to go.
It seems as though you have no experience programming at all, so the question you were probably trying to ask is, “Which language is easiest to learn,” or, “What is the easiest way to get into the industry and program games?”

In either case, the appropriate sub-forum would be here:
http://www.gamedev.net/forum/101-breaking-into-the-industry/

And in either case, your answers will have a similar theme: #2 still holds. There are no shortcuts. If such an easy method for getting a AAA game made existed, AAA games would not exist because they would all be AAA games.
Everyone starts at the bottom, goes through a long and difficult process of learning how to program (the verb, not the noun), and we all work our ways up, until 10 or 20 years later we might be in a position to run a team, studio, or company capable of making whatever that top-notch game was that no longer seems like such a good idea due to the changing times.


L. Spiro

I suggest you start out with something that is managed that also has a lot of tutorials.

Java will fit the bill perfectly for you in my opinion; it is very forgiving, has a long history and sports an easy to use API. Minecraft was created with Java, so take that for what it's worth. As far as Java editors go, I would go and look for Eclipse, specifically a version for Java SE and then install the latest JDK (Java Development Kit). Work at tutorials and small applications for a while and you'll be able to slowly make progress toward building "top notch" games. Note the use of the word slowly. It will take you a very long time to get to the point of making anything substantial, but it is very rewarding. My biggest piece of advice is to develop a passion for programming early on, and then the rest comes easy. Good luck.

OK folks, I need to know what progam is the easiest to learn but still powerful enough to brimg out a top notch game.

Also the intended platform makes a difference. Are you targeting iOS? Then you probably want to use ObjectiveC. Android? Then you'll want to learn Java. Windows PC? Your options are pretty much wide open but some popular choices would be C#, C++ or C.

People I spoken to say "Python" is a good language to learn first.
If you ever played "EVE Online" it has been developed in "Stackless Python".
So why not take a look on Python and Stackless Python?

I can't say what platforms that uses Python. But if you are looking for PC.
Python might work.

But creating game is hard work in any language!

I think Python is really fun to start with, and PyGame is easy to learn.
The best about pygame.org is that you can download games that others have made, and take a look at there source code.

You may want to investigate Alice.

http://www.alice.org/

[quote name='www.alice.org']
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice's interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course.
[/quote]

Please specify your programming background.

If you have never programmed before, Python could be a good start. Many US universities are teaching python to freshmans.
I began learning C on my college and I liked it. C is nicely structured and adapts pretty well to programming logic.

If you are going to use Python pay attention to the following: python2.x and python3.x are very different. They are both python but they use a different system for data structures and other stuff that don't blend very well.
Sticky to one of them and check the additional libraries website (i.e pygame, panda3D, etc.) to see what version they support for your platform.

If you want to use an engine, maybe C# is a good choice. It is accepted on Unity3D and Microsoft's XNA.

You could make some top notch arcade games pretty easily using Game Maker. You can combine drag and drop development with its built in programming language(GML). It's very well documented and basically spoon feeds you programming if that's what your looking for.

People I spoken to say "Python" is a good language to learn first.
If you ever played "EVE Online" it has been developed in "Stackless Python".
So why not take a look on Python and Stackless Python?

I can't say what platforms that uses Python. But if you are looking for PC.
Python might work.

But creating game is hard work in any language!

Python is a good place for a beginner to start programming, but I wouldn't go around suggesting Stackless Python. Stackless Python is just an alternative implementation to the more widely used CPython interpreter. It's a bit naïve to suggest Stackless Python just because _a_ game (Eve Online) uses it, especially without solid justification. Stackless is designed to solve a very specific set of problems--problems which 99.9% of Python programmers (newbies especially) don't need to worry about.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stackless_Python
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPython

I second that motion for Game Maker!! Only if its going to be a 2D game. GML as a programming language is like a flexible, simplified, easy to learn version of C. Also now with the new version you can port it to a bunch of different devices. http://yoyogames.com if you decide to check it out.

Thanks to everyone who answered my question.