The Definitive Guide to Language Selection

Bob Dole · 2006-10-23T14:15:47

This is a long one, I apologize! :) The Definitive Guide to Language Selection Again ( and again and again and again ) we are asked the same question by new developers. What language should I choose! Then again ( and again and again and again ) the thread devolves into another language war. My intention with this thread is to put together as unbiased a list of language features that can be simply linked in response to these questions. Please feel free to contribute unless you are a mindless language zealot, in which case, please check your attitude at the door. However, if you are an advocate of a given language, feel free to contribute a blurb on the positives of that language but drop negative comments about other languages. This isn’t an X vs. Y thread, at least I hope it isn’t. Keep something in mind, to a new user, two veterans arguing arcane points about language X vs. language Y isn’t helpful. In fact, I imagine its quite harmful to their understanding. Hell, to somebody who has yet to write a line of code concepts like JITing, RTTI, early/late binding, etc… are simply Greek to them ( unless of course if they are Greek! Then, lets say… Chinese to them! :) ). First off, to new developers the question you are asking isn’t a simple one, nor does it have a yes or no answer. It is possible that in one situation a certain language is perfect, but in other situations it is not. Also, quite often multiple languages are actually used for different parts of a single game. Another aspect to keep in mind is, do you have experience with a language already? If so, are you comfortable using that language. This is a valuable plus, probably the most valuable plus in language selection. If you are trying to learn the concepts of game programming and already have experience with a certain language you already have a leg up on most new developers. Trust me, its much harder to learn a new language and a new style at the same time. Also, game programming concepts stay pretty static between languages. A game loop looks very similar regardless to the language it is written in, AI is AI, regardless to the language its written in. Heck, the graphic calls you use to put images on the screen will probably end up look very similar. In short, experience you gain using one language to develop a game, will help you in developing future games, regardless to the language you choose. To most veteran programmers, switching between languages is not really that hard. The next thing to ask yourself is, what kind of game are you trying to create. Certain games lend themselves to certain languages. For example, Java is a much stronger language to consider if you are thinking about creating a mobile phone game ( not to condemn Java for non phone games ). Additionally, if you are looking at creating Mac only games, Objective C is a more viable solution, but in other situations, not so much. Lastly, if you are new and are writing a MMORPG, Doom 3 or Baldurs Gate 2, don’t. Granted, that’s a topic for a different thread, but if you are at the point where you don’t know what language to use yet, these game types are far outside of your grasp. Save them for later. Now, onto the languages: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ C++ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ C++ is the grand daddy of all game programming languages. I wont lie to you, probably 99% of commercial windows or console games are written in C++ and there are reasons for this. First and foremost, 99% of games are written in C++ because 99% of games are written in C++. Its called market momentum and it’s a strong thing. Because most games are written in C++, most game tools are written in C++, as are most game SDKS ( software development kits ). Additionally, most game programmers have experience with C++, which means when it comes time to select a new language for their next project… well, its kindof a new brainer. Don’t take this as a ringing endorsement of C++ though, it has its strong points and weak points, like any language. Also, there used to be a time where all games were written in Assembly, so just because it’s the language de jour, doesn’t mean it always will be. As to the strengths of the language, well perhaps the biggest one is, most libraries out there are written in C++, and it’s fairly certain every platform out there ( from Windows, to Linux to the PS3 ) has a C++ compiler for it. This means, with work, you can port your game probably the most platforms of any language currently used. Also, C++ is a fairly low level language or atleast can be. This often means, if you know the language very well, you can write some very fast code. Note though, I am not saying C++ is the fastest language out there, that again is as subjective a statement as “X is the best programming language”. Another big plus ( and minus  ) of C++ is, its rather a jack of all trades language. Theoretically you can do anything in C++. You can access hardware directly, you have full control over memory and assets of your computer. WOW! C++ sounds perfect! Not so fast there. If C++ was perfect, other languages wouldn’t exist. As is often the case, for ever positive, there is a negative. This is true with all programming languages. Lets look at the negatives. First off, C++ is an evolved language from a language called C, which was a VERY low level language. As a result C++ has a lot of legacy “crap” that makes it really confusing for new developers and makes the language a bit less “clean”. Another big drawback to C++ is the system libraries that ship with it are very limited compared to other languages. Things that you will take for granted in other languages ( like string manipulation for example ) are much more difficult in C++. Another big downside is the same as the earlier upside. C++ is a jack of all trades language, it can do a number of things, but that doesn’t mean it does them that well or they aren’t a hack. To accomplish many tasks in C++, you may end up using a library like BOOST, which although powerful, isn’t near as clean as doing the same things in other languages and is often much harder to learn. Lastly, all of the power and control over your computer comes with a price. All memory in C++ is handled by the user, and memory related errors are probably the biggest headache to new ( and experienced! ) C++ developers. C++ gives you a lot of rope, but its pretty easy to use that rope to make a noose! Finally, I don’t think you will find a soul in the world that will tell you C++ is an easy language ( compared to many others ) to learn. If you choose C++, keep in mind you have a pretty harsh learning curve. If C++ sounds interesting to you, here are a few gaming related things to google: 3D graphics: DirectX, OpenGL, Ogre3D, Crystal Space, NEHE 2D Graphics: SDL, Allegro, Direct Draw ------------------------------------------------------------------------ C# ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is the new kid on the block. In the sake of honesty and in case of bias, I need to mention, C# is the language I do 90+% of my development work in. I am trying to be unbiased in this writeup, but I thought you should know in case I failed at that task. Keep that in mind. I think the first and foremost thing to say about C# is…….. Microsoft developed it. Yes, that Microsoft. For many people, that is reason enough to reject it outright, although I think that is a mistake. First off, C# is standardized by a third party called the ECMA, the same group that standardizes &#106avascript. Second, there is a Linux version of C# called Mono that runs on most of the various versions of Linux, FreeBSD and the MacOS ( version 10+ ). Also, most Microsoft related platforms outside of Windows support a version of C#, including Pocket PC’s, SmartPhones and the Xbox 360. Next thing you need to know is unlike C++ ( to a certain degree, without splitting hairs ), C# needs a runtime component to operate. If you have heard much about C# or Java in the past, you have probably heard things like Virtual Machine (VM) discussed. The virtual machine is the runtime C# needs to work. Here is a brief ( and most likely poor ) description of what that means. When you compile C# code, it doesn’t compile directly to machine code, but an intermediate language the VM executes. Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is, each running C# program has its own little virtualized computer to run in. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach. It *can* execute a bit slower because of the overhead of being virtualized. That is perhaps the biggest disadvantage. On the flipside, if your code causes damage to the system, it tends to be contained to the virtual machine meaning other programs generally wont crash. Plus memory allocation is much simplified, but we cover that in a minute. However, when talking about C#, many people are actually talking about .NET. .NET is a very confusing topic to many ( for good reason ), but the biggest thing to keep in mind is, .NET is a library of routines to do day to day stuff. Many things you would have to write from scratch in C++ are there out of the box. Working with strings is trivial, creating GUI ( graphical user interfaces ) is much easier, etc… The .NET libraries are massive and are a huge advantage. Next up is the biggest point of contention to most developers. Some people love it, some people hate it. C# is a garbage collected language. This means, if you use a chunk of memory and are done with it, the system will eventually get rid of it. This makes the language itself much easier to work with. Although, to be honest, even though C# makes memory usage more simple, you still need to be wary of it. Improper usage can still bite you in the ass. Remember before when I said the majority of gaming libraries are written for C++? Well this is both a strength and weakness of C#. C# is designed to interop with other languages. This means its pretty simple to call libraries written in other languages. You will find that a number of popular C++ game libraries have C# bindings that allow C# to take advantage of them. Additionally, calling a different languages code ( not just C++ ) from C# tends to be very easy. The downside is, there is a bit of a performance hit for doing so. The biggest selling point to C# is productivity. I can only cite my own personal experience in this regard, but generally I can write and debug C# code a number of times faster then I can with C++ code. As a trade off, you can lose some performance and some control over your hardware and operating environments. Also, imho, C# is a much easier language to learn, although again, this is pure opinion. If C# sounds interesting, here are a few things to google: 3D Graphics: Managed Direct X, Tao, IrrLicht, XNA 2D Graphics SDL.Net, XNA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was going to cover Delphi, Python and Java aswell, but I have much less experience with those languages and noticed how damned much I have written already! ;) Heres hoping someone else in the community that favors those languages can write a short blurb in the format above, keep the bias to a minimum. In follow up conversation, please keep comments as unbiased as possible. Feel free to talk about the positives and negatives of a given language, but please try to keep other languages out of it! I would like this thread to be as unbiased and informative as possible resource for people that ask that age old question. Plus, hopefully the time we spend now will eliminate a lot of time in the future have the same arguments again and again. Oh, and if I was factually wrong or showed bias myself, please point it out. Also, please feel free to address points I didn’t. Please try not to get into arcane language issues though that wouldn’t be relevant to someone new to programming.

For Beginners

Started by Serapth October 22, 2006 06:18 PM

23 comments, last by stimarco 17 years, 5 months ago

CTar

1,134

October 23, 2006 09:55 AM

I don't think this is a good, idea mostly because in a thread based system like this it will be hard to find actual information. Someone experienced would have to compile the information somewhere. Also the Serapth's post is heavily biased, towards OO imperative compiled1 c-derived languages (that's actually quite specific). To be fair you'd need to cover OO, procedural, logical (eg. Prolog) and functional at least. You would need to at least mention a minimum of special features like memory management (GC? RAII possible?), concurrency (message based? Lock based? Data flow variables? Implicit? Thread-based? Futures?) and evaluation (lazy or eager?). FYI evaluation style is very important when choosing a language, both because of the technique of programming and because of effiency gains/loses.

Your post also contains lots of misinformation, which could really misguide beginners. "99% of commercial windows or console games", more like 10-15 %, AFAIK the Java, C and C# are more widely used.

About the greek and chinese, they won't really understand the advantage of early/late binding, but neither will they understand the advantage of Boost, libraries, etc. You will need to properly explain all concepts before describing languages, and that isn't an easy task. You need to give beginners easy to understand information like "X is easy to learn", "y is efficient". However this will most likely misguide them, since they want to easily and efficiently create their new MMORPG. So you'll also need to explain how to choose a language, that you can't just go ahead and create a MMORPG, you need years of experience in various languages and projects before even starting the design.

If "definitive" guide would have to be created you would at least need to cover different approaches to programming, like functional (maybe also logical or constraint based). Some languages I don't think you can leave out:
Scheme (SICP, a good approach to programming)
Common LISP (cool object system, and have lots of cool features neatly integrated)
Haskell (lazily evaluated, functional, monads, statically typed)
Standard ML (interresting type system, similar to Haskell in some regards)
O'Caml (another functional languages (not strictly functional though) )
Smalltalk
Erlang (fault tolerant, interresting concurrency model)
Epigram (not all that mature or proven, but have dependent types which is interresting)
Prolog (example of logic programming)
AspectJ (one of the most important aspect-oriented languages)
Java (imperative, JIT compiled, OO)
C (low-level, very popular)
Objective C (popular on Macs)
C++
C#
Oz (an example of a lanuage integrating many concepts)
I have most likely forgotten a bunch.

I doubt many people here at GDNet would be able to create such a guide, there are a few who I believe might be capable of doing it (I'm not one of them).

1: C# is actually a hybrid language, but in the end it's compiled on the end user's machine.

ToohrVyk

1,596

October 23, 2006 09:56 AM

To add to the language database: Felix along with any C++ libraries, and Objective Caml with LablGL and/or OCamlSDL bindings.

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Serapth

6,672

Author

October 23, 2006 11:12 AM

Quote:Original post by CTar
I don't think this is a good, idea mostly because in a thread based system like this it will be hard to find actual information. Someone experienced would have to compile the information somewhere. Also the Serapth's post is heavily biased, towards OO imperative compiled1 c-derived languages (that's actually quite specific). To be fair you'd need to cover OO, procedural, logical (eg. Prolog) and functional at least.

You are 100% correct. My hope was others here would do a writeup about other languages.

Obviously, that failed.

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Oluseyi

2,123

October 23, 2006 11:29 AM

The reason that this effort has failed - and the reason that similar efforts have always failed, and likely will always fail - is because what language a beginner selects really doesn't matter. People who no longer consider themselves beginners put far too much emphasis on the matter. The beginner should pick a language - any language, based on any criteria, no matter how bad or irrational - and stick with it. Yes, picking another language may have made things easier, but not by that much.

These days, whenever someone asks "language X or language Y," my response is "flip a coin." Seriously, it doesn't matter that much. Yes, picking C# when your objective is to write games for mobile phones may seem irrational, but the truth is that the majority of your early work will not be on the mobile phone but on the PC, and the majority of your gained knowledge/understanding of programming translates to Java or C++.

This is why language wars are silly.

stimarco

1,071

October 23, 2006 02:15 PM

Oluseyi has a good point. (I'd probably be more sarcastic and reply with: "English".)

I started with Sinclair BASIC. Unfortunately, advising people to start on a Sinclair ZX81 / Timex 100 rarely goes down well with the instant gratification crowd intent on creating the next great MMORPGRTSONEONEONE in a week.

There is no reason for an FAQ for this subject, simply because the question is, at best, rhetorical.

There is no way to provide a definitive answer without knowing far more about the questioner's intentions. When the questioner has given you the full, contextual background behind his query, the answer is, more often than not, dictated by pragmatic necessities rather than base desires and thus becomes moot.

I would therefore replace any such FAQs with a more general guide to game development for beginners. I'm working on an outline for such an article at the moment, which I intend to post to the forums for further refinement and discussion before embarking on the full work. (I could use some writing samples for my CV, so this seems a good opportunity to kill two birds with one flame war.)

Sean Timarco Baggaley (Est. 1971.)Warning: May contain bollocks.

The Definitive Guide to Language Selection

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The Definitive Guide to Language Selection

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