Don't get me wrong - C/C++ is great and has many uses, but using it can be sometimes a chore.

Why? Because of pointer hell. In C/C++ pointers are used literally everywhere, even where passing by value would be enough. Like here:

int WINAPI MessageBox(
  _In_opt_  HWND hWnd,
  _In_opt_  LPCTSTR lpText,
  _In_opt_  LPCTSTR lpCaption,
  _In_      UINT uType
);

That's right. This is WinAPI's message box function. LPCTSTR in case you don't have WinAPI experience, is pointer to string. WTF? This function doesn't even NEED pointer to where string is stored as it doesn't change it. It only show standard Windows message box.

Such quirks aren't even specific to WinAPI (which, admittedly, is poorly written). Most of C/C++ APIs I had even "pleasure" to work with are littered with things like that. Like Qt:

void QMessageBox::about(QWidget * parent, const QString & title, const QString & text)

Same sin as in case of WinAPI.

But we want to make games, don't we? Let look into some game API, say, SDL:

SDL_LoadBMP

Name SDL_LoadBMP -- Load a Windows BMP file into an SDL_Surface.

Synopsis

#include "SDL.h"

SDL_Surface *SDL_LoadBMP(const char *file);

Description

Loads a surface from a named Windows BMP file.

Return Value

Returns the new surface, or NULL if there was an error.

See Also

SDL_SaveBMP

(from http://www.libsdl.org/docs/html/sdlloadbmp.html)

Why it even returns pointer, when returning value (SDL surface) would be enough?

Such approach results in things like memory leaks and other sort of "fun" stuff. Pointers should be only used when you need write access to variable you are passing and can't afford working on a copy (passing by value).

Finding joy

Above thing which I've dubbed "Pointer Hell" was thing that made me chose Pascal (Object Pascal specifically) as language of choice when developing games. In Pascal you only use pointers when you actually need them. Which is almost never as most things you can do without touching them.

Unless, of course, you are interfacing with some c/c++ library, like I'm doing with Allegro.

Pascal also provide syntax that any human (or non- human ;)) being who happen to know English can read and in many cases comments aren't even needed to understand what code does. Unless you reading code from some obfuscation contest or written by first-time programmer.

Also when coding in Pascal you can really enjoy this. You don't have to worry about memory leaks and for the most part logic bugs are easy to fix. There is also helpful community related to game making ready to help when you happen to have some issues. It's mostly because of them I could progress so far when writing Super Heli Land.

Notable games and software written with Pascal:

- Original Jazz Jackrabbit (Turbo Pascal 7.0)

- RPG Maker 2003 (Delphi, not sure about version)

- Resource Hacker

- BlockCAD (Delphi)

- Hedgewars, the Worms clone - freepascal (engine, rendering) plus some c++ bits mainly because there was no good Qt bindings for Pascal when project was started.

- This.

Now, where is up arrow when you need it?

That's right. This is WinAPI's message box function. LPCTSTR in case you don't have WinAPI experience, is pointer to string. WTF? This function doesn't even NEED pointer to where string is stored as it doesn't change it. It only show standard Windows message box.

I don't think you even know what the point of pointers are...

What has changing the string to do with anything?

Why should you copy the entire string around in the function call, and mess with dynamically sized data, when all the function need is a pointer to a string to use?

That would be a massive waste of time.

I'm pretty sure Object Pascal use pointers most of the time too, it just hides the fact better...

For c++, you can use references to get a bit nicer syntax, but they are still just pointers with some extra rules. (like inability to be un-initialized)

Why are you so scared of asterisks anyway?

Nothing wrong with pascal though, keep on using it.

I do wish C++ had some nicer syntax for smart pointers...

Still havn't really gotten used to using them. Probably because I'm too used to the simplicity of raw pointers...

Doesn't help that my debugger seem to have problems showing them correctly too...

Nothing wrong with pascal though, keep on using it.

:=

Nothing wrong with pascal though, keep on using it.

:=

==, ->

If you don't have any substantial things to say, don't post.

Hey, just because you like to fly planes over mountain ranges doesn't mean we all want to. Some of us enjoy the lung-killing climb up Mount C++.

That said, SDL and Win32 are designed for 'C'. Despite the fact that people use it with C++, it must use C-only language features, hence the pointers.

You'll notice Qt (which is C++) uses const references where appropriate, which removes the so called 'pointer hell' you are talking about.

void QMessageBox::about(QWidget * parent, const QString & title, const QString & text)

The parameter 'parent' is optional, so it's a pointer - you can pass in nullptr if you just want a message box without attaching it to any other window.