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I'm thinking of trying to make some simple 2d games, but I've yet to choose a language. A lot of people recommend either C++ with SDL or python with pygame. I keep hearing that developement on C++ is fairly slow, and developement time with Python is fairly fast.
Anyways, could anyone elaborate on this? What exactly makes development in C++ so time consuming? The programs I've made have been Project Euler-style in that they're very short and math-based, so I have no experience in larger projects.
There are two things that are relevant between C++ and Python that will affect your time-to-develop any project including a game. There are the languages themselves and the libraries. I've played with the SDL to some extent and peeked at PyGame and for your specific instance I don't think the libraries are going to be much of a factor. So I'll focus on the languages themselves.
Python is a dynamically-typed, garbage-collected language. C++ is a statically-typed, non-garbage-collected language. What this means is that in C++ a lot of your development time will be spent managing memory and dealing with your type structure. This affords you a lot of power, but the question is do you really need it?
If you're looking to write a simple game with some basic graphics and some good gameplay, then I don't think you truly need all the power that C++ will give you. If you're looking to write something that will push the envelope, be the next A-list game, be the next MMO, fit on a console or a handheld device, then you will likely need the power that C++ affords.
The power of Python is in it's ability to allow you to focus more on the problem than having to deal with testing low-level issues such as memory allocation. I can't count how many times days of development have been wasted tracking down memory leaks in C or C++. An advantage of all high level languages.
Python is very easy to learn compared to C++,so you can be up to speed a lot quicker in doing basic programming tasks. Therefore, you'll move quicker into advanced tasks as well.
C++ has a lot of power but has many ways to shoot yourself in the foot compared to Python(not saying that can't be done in Python).
The compile/debug cycle can get old sometimes in C++ depending on what you're trying to do. Although technically speaking, everytime you run a Python script it's getting "compiled" per se, it's just a quicker cycle. A good IDE can help alleviate this is in Python by automatically checking your code for syntax errors while you type it out.
If you have some code you want to test inside a larger project, it's a hassle sometimes to isolate it for testing. Whereas a good Python interpreter such as IPython, makes it easy to test a small bit of code and see how the language behaves and paste it into a file.
Python also interfaces very well with existing C/C++ code through many numerous ways. That way if a new whizbang Python module you created is really slow, then you can soup it up in C/C++ then wrap it up with Python through ctypes, Boost::Python, or SWIG.
And most of all, Python comes with a great standard library that has a lot of stuff figured out for you. It's just a matter of putting the pieces altogether! It has a great community behind it, so if it's not in the standard library, there's a good chance someone out there has solved the problem (PyGame, Numpy, SciPy, Pyserial, PyWin, etc.) for you. You can just google it, grab it and plop the code right into your program...away you go!
I've heard these complaints before about C++, but the fact is, programming in any language with which you are unfamiliar is time consuming.
A good C++ programmer can probably crank out the app much faster than an okay Python programmer and visa versa.
I think C++ often gets a bad reputation because it allows you get much lower level - pointers, memory management, etc, and if you aren't used to thinking about such things, it can take a bit of time. If you are used to working in that environment, it can become second nature.
Unless choice of language is something imposed upon you by your company, team, client, etc. I usually recommend that folks go with the language they are most comfortable with OR most interested in learning more about. If speed is the issue you are concerned with, look at the learning curve for each language and your past experience. C++ tends to have a higher learning curve, but that too depends on the person.
Kindof a non-answer I know.
Python has some big advantages over programming languages like C++. I myself have programmed a lot with C++, C and other programming languages. Lately I am also programming in Python and I got to like it very much!
You can have a quick start with Python. Since it is rather simple to learn (at least with some programming experience and enough abstract thinking), you can have fast successes. Also the script-like behaviour makes starting easy and it is also possible, to quickly test some things in the integrated shell. This can also be good for debugging.
The whole language is packed with powerful features and it has a good and rather complete set of libraries.
There was the argument that with the "right library" you can develop as quickly with C++ as with Python. This might (partly) be, but I myself have never experienced it, because such libraries are rare. I had also a big library at hand, but still lacked many valuable features in C++. The so called "standard template library" STL makes things even worse in my opinion. It is a really powerful library. But it is also that complex, that it adds the complexity of an additional programming language to C++. I really disliked it and in a company I worked in, much worktime was lost, because the compiler was not able to give useful error-output in case of errors in the STL.
Python is different. Instead of putting the "speed of the programm" on the throne -- sacrificing all else (as C++ and especially the STL does) -- it puts "speed of development" first. The language gives you a powerful toolkit and it is accompanied by a huge library. When you need speed, you can also implement time critical things in C or C++ and call it from Python.
There is also at least one big online Game implemented in Python.
It's time consuming because in C++ you have to deal with more low-level tasks.
In Python you are free to focus on the development of the actual game instead of dealing with memory management etc.
there are many things that make c++ longer to develop in. Its lower level, has pointers, different libraries for different systems, the type system, and there are others I am sure I am missing.
It takes about the same amount of time to write the same code in pretty much all of the high level languages. The win is that in certain languages it is easier to use other peoples code. In a lot of Python/Ruby/Perl apps, you write 10% of the code and import libraries to do the other 90%. That is harder in C/C++ since the libraries have different interfaces and other incompatibilities.
C++ vs Python is a pretty personal choice. Personally I feel I lose more time with not having the C/Java class system (more run time errors/debugging time, don't have anywhere near as good auto completion, need to do more documentation and optimization) than I gain (not having to write interfaces/stub function and being able to worry less about memory managment). Other people feel the exact opposite.
In the end it probably depends on the type of game. If your processor intensive go to C++ (maybe with a scripting language if it makes sense). Otherwise use whatever language you prefer
I'd focus more on choosing a framework to build your game on than trying to pick a language. Unless the goal is to learn how games work inside and out, you're going to want to use a framework. Try out a couple, and pick the one that meets your requirements and feels nice to you.
Once you've picked the framework, the language choice becomes easy - use the language for which the framework is written.
There are many options for game frameworks in C++ - pygame works for python. There are many that work with other languages/tools as well (including .NET, Lua, etc.)
Short Answer
Yes python is faster in terms of development time. There are many case studies in real life that show this. However, you don't want to do a 3d graphics engine in Python.
Do you have any programming experience at all? If not, I would start with Python which is easier to learn, even if it is not a better tool for game development. If you decide you want to program games for living, you'll probably need to switch to C++ at some point.
Note that SDL is currently slow, because it basically doesn't use hardware acceleration.
SFML is an alternative of choice, and is available in Python too.
Why limit yourself to those two options? With C# or Java you get access to a huge collection of useful libraries plus garbage collection and (in the case of C#) JIT compiling.
Furthermore, you're saying that you're looking to do game development, but from your task description it sounds like you're also looking at coding your own engine. Is that part of the exercise? Otherwise you should definitely take a look at the available Indie engines out there - lots are cheap of not free and open source.
Needless to say, working from an existing engine is definitely faster than going from scratch :)
Some people would argue that development time is slower in C++ when compared to Python.
Wouldn't it be the case that the time you saved in developing an application (or game) in python is the time you gonna use in improving performance after its developed? and in the later part when you have least options left?
It largely depends upon the purpose for which you are going to develop the application.
If you are thinking for an enterprise application in which case it is going to be hit by millions (web-app) or an application with focus on low-footprint, faster loading into memory, faster execution, then your choice is C++.
If you are projecting your application for not being use at this level, surely Python is the choice to go for.
Maintainability is considerable, but disciplined code can overcome this.
Largely depends upon long term projections. On how serious and critical the application is going to be.
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After a while surfing on source code of big projects especially application servers like this, I have understand these projects are not developing by one language. Many of them are using python for secondary language.
Now I have four questions:
Why is used more than one language?
Why python is used for secondary often?
Why python is not used to develop all parts of projects and they still is using c/c++?
And which the parts of projects should be developed with python and which part of projects is using c/c++?
Hard and soft layers
Programming language designs tend to trade off between "high-level" features, which enhance programmer productivity at the cost of speed, and "low-level" features, which require a great deal of programmer effort but produce very fast code.
Therefore it sometimes makes sense to use two languages on a project:
Write 90% of the code in an expressive, high level language which is easy to write and maintain.
Write the 10% of performance-critical code in a low-level language which is harder to write, but allows for comprehensive optimisation.
c2wiki calls this the HardAndSoftLayers pattern:
By virtue of the first rule of optimization, go ahead and write most of your code in the highest level language you can find.
By virtue of the third rule of optimization, when you must, use a profiler and find the slow parts of your program. Take those parts, and write them in a lower-level language.
For reference, the rules of optimisation are:
First Rule Of Optimization - Don't.
Second Rule Of Optimization - Don't... yet.
Profile Before Optimizing
The rule is pretty simple: the developers choose the language(s) based more or less on the following criterias:
their familiarity with it
how easily you can do the task using that language
how well is suited the language to the specific task
Today most of the development done in this multilingual environments are huge solutions, where different components need to communicate, exchange data or simply do work which is comprised of more than one step. It is easier to write the communication/data interpretation/whatever wrapping necessary part in a language such as python and then leave the real time and speed needy work to be done by some lower level language which compiles directly without the need for an interpreter.
Let's dig a little bit deeper.
How familiar are the developers with the programming language depends on the background of each developer. If they are given a free choice, obviously they will pick the language they know the best, unless there is a lobby from someone else... usually higher in the management chain. Python is not necessarily the language of choice, python is simply an easy to use and learn language, which is well suited for most tasks. Our project has no bit of python in it, only tons of ruby code. Because the main developer liked ruby at that time, so we're stuck with it.
If you know more than one programming language you know that each of them is doing the same thing differently. For example, creating a socket, connecting to a server, reading the stuff and printing it out is just a few lines of Erlang code, but it takes a lot more to do it in C++ (for example...) So again, if you have a task you know how to solve easily in a specific language you are going to stuck to it. People are lazy, they don't necessarily learn new stuff unless needed.
Obviously you are not going to write a device driver in python, and it is much easier to create a complete web service with java than with plain C... but you still would need the part of the solution that does the hardware close thing. When you have a task you carefully measure the requirements and implications and wisely choose the language you will do it in. Because it will stuck to it forever.
Sometimes python is not good enough.
Dealing with computer vision, image or sound processing, calculate tones of data is not really what python is good at. Other language like C or C++ is really good at those fields.
support your primary language is java, and you want to glue other languages into one project. That where we need Python. Python is well known glue language. you can use ctype,SWIG, Jython, ironPython or other method to bind multiple language.
Guess I answered this question at 1.
Need for speed. go for C or C++ . Care more about productivity, go with Python.
Without referring to the project you sent, I'll give you my 50c for why the company I work for, as to why we use python quite often in our projects.
Primarily, we have no python code relating to the software solution itself. All python code either relates to assist with development, machine set up, common framework tools deployment for testing, and vastly for code generation.
Why is used more than one language?
No project we work on has only one language, when looking at all our enterprise level solutions or large scale implementations.
This is mostly due to the fact that our tiers are written in languages that provide best performance and usability at each level separately.
For instance, C++ for speedy core back-end services, and C#.NET for rapidly developed and provide good UI for the front-end.
Why python is used for secondary often?
Personally, apart for the reasons I explained above, we don't make use of python 'secondary often'. We use C++/C# as the most common pair, but depending on the platform, might be other pairs.
Why python is not used to develop all parts of projects and they still is using c/c++?
Python is great for quick solutions and doing things you wish your shell could do. This largely involves file management, etc.
C++ is perhaps the fastest compiled language, providing optimal usage for core and largely used actions.
Based on that, and the fact that the market has more knowledge and experience in C++ (for many reasons), C++ is the more popular choice.
And which the parts of projects should be developed with python and which part of projects is using c/c++?
I believe I may have already addressed that above.
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I hope I could help, please remember this is only my personal opinion and by no means should this be taken as a fact.
Okay, so I've been getting into 2D game developing/programming , and many games I've seen use some sort of scripting language too. So I'm wondering - What's the purpose of using scripts in games? I know there's not simple one reason answer, and I've been trying to consider all the possibilities. Here's what I 'think' I know so far:
1) Scripts allow for changing the game without having to re-compile.
2) Scripts are easier for non-programmers to use.
3) Scripts allow me to separate the engine from the game itself allowing me to make other games with the same components quicker?
That's about all I'm aware of. My next question is, if I'm going to be Dev/programming a game alone - do I really need to use scripts? Or could I prototype the game using something like python or ruby, to allow for rapid testing, then rewrite the code in C++ saving time and compiler bugs, etc?
Another thing I'm wondering, Am I better off using Ruby or Python since I'm most experienced with those? Or should I use Lua, Perl or something else if it better fits what I aim to achieve? Speaking on that matter, what really should I use scripts for? should I use them to position and model game menu UI's, write/read save-files, load map levels, hold arrays or structures of game terminology such as "New Game" or "Quit," all of the above, none of the above?
If I make use of scripts, won't that allow game mechanics to be edited by the end user? Or is there a way to package the scripts into one compressed file that the engine can read?
Most basically, I'm wondering:
What should I use scripting in my game for? And why?
Do I need use scripting languages if I'm working alone or with programmers as opposed to Devs?
What scripting language 'should' I use if I were to be making platformers, RPGs, or what-have-you?
your top 3 reasons are all 100% correct and are the main reasons for using scripting languages along with your game engine.
Personally I've only really had experience with Lua through Luabind. It's a little tricky to setup but it was worth it. What you can do with scripting languages is expose the data structures and/or functionality that you want the 'user' in this case yourself, to be able to use. Generally speaking the only game mechanics etc that can be editted would be the ones you allowed them to.
What should I use scripting in my game for? And why?
Asset loading, exposing features/types, ie, for our game engine (written in c++), we had a base level, and then many different types of level inherriting from it, such as wave level, death match, etc. The user simply states in the script what type of level they need, and then chucks in the assets here too. In my demo we had;
Level="wavelevel"
--Level Initial number of enemies
EnemyNumbers="3"
--Level Total number of waves
WaveNumbers="4"
--Wave coefficient
WaveCoeff="1.1"
--Size of terrain
TerrainSize="256"
--Terrain file
TerrainFile="resource/Models/mountainous.raw"
Don't worry too much about the numbers and all of that.
As you can see that does some asset loading as well as determining the level type
We also gave a lot of control for the AI to scripts, in fact, the data structures were almost completely exposed to Lua.
Do I need use scripting languages if I'm working alone or with programmers as opposed to Devs?
Yes no maybe? We all prefer 'real' coding of course. If you can make your game engine abstract enough to build completely different games just with Lua, then it means you've done a great job and have designed it very well.
The other thing you have to think about, especially if you're game engine is quite huge, and lets face it, there isn't really going to be a small one, each time you compile, it can take minutes! It's the linker that's taking time here.
What scripting language 'should' I use if I were to be making platformers, RPGs, or what-have-you?
I've only ever used Lua, so that's the only advice I can give here.
Hope this is helpful info for you.
Honestly, as this sounds like your first attempt at a game ever, you shouldn't even be worrying about this sort of thing. Instead, I'd be more worried about keeping the scope of your project down to a level where you have a snow ball's chance of actually completing something. If you haven't done something at the level of Tic-Tac-Toe or Pong yet, do that first. What you learn there will be more valuable than worrying about a scripting language.
Oh and if you are doing an RPG as your first attempt at a game. Don't. They are by far the hardest type of game to do even for professional developers with many, many times the resources available to them. Keep it simple and and use this as a learning experience.
Back to your questions:
If you are the only one who will ever see your game, your choice on using a scripting language or not. If it will save you time overall or you want to learn how to do integration of scripting with code, go for it, but beware it will be a bit of a time sink.
Yes/no/depends on your second. If the scope of your game is small, scripting isn't as important. If you doing this alone, scripting isn't as important.
Your choice on what you know or what your engine will support (or what engine tools you cna buy to support). Lua is popular, but even hand rolled scripts will work as well. It's more about decoupling data from code and design type work from engineer type work.
Your initial points above apply. Scripts keep non coders out of code and allow anyone on a team to easily change data related stuff that should be in code anyways. Scripts also act as a very high level language allowing lots of game level changes in controlled ways that would/will look ugly if placed in code. I've personally worked on games that were done both ways. Scripted games were a bit easier to maintain at the end of the game cycle - IF IF IF the script support code was mature and had been run through some debug cycles. New script support code is harder to debug than coding things straight because there are more possible points of failure. Games that were coded without scripts tended to get done a touch faster, but required a lot more programmer/engineer time which means the overall scope of things had to be limited to stay on budget.
I will say that well designed scripting and overall gaming system will always beat straight coding. Look at Unity for an example of how scripting and code and everything else can be coupled into a slick interface that allows very quick game development.
What should I use scripting in my game for? And why?
The reasons you cited are good ones. One thing that you might need to understand is that most professionnal games are still built with C++ and it's far from being flexible to change if the code base is big. So if you use C++ you'll need scripting languages to make quick changes where it's imporant to be allowed to do so accordingly to the reasons you listed.
If you don't use C++, maybe you use a language that can absorb changes quickly, making the main purpose of scripting not so obvious. I wouldn't use scripting language in a Flash or Python game for example.
Do I need use scripting languages if I'm working alone or with
programmers as opposed to Devs?
As my previous answer : it depends on the timing of changes. Think that the core rules of games rarely change but everything relative to level design will, and should be testable ASAP. If you can do it in the game's programming language, why bother? If you can't, then any way to speed-up change integration will pay.
What scripting language 'should' I use if I were to be making
platformers, RPGs, or what-have-you?
Frankly, there is no one solution to any problem. I personally use Falcon and ChaiScript, Lua is well known but any scripting language that can be used with your game programming will do. That's a question already asked around and if you have doubt, just choose Lua as it's the most common in gaming.
I'll give you a quick and short answer. Scripts are mostly for changing things while the game is still running which you can edit things faster. This is much better then recompile, reloading the assets, going to the specific point in game, activate certain conditionals (items, talking to people in specific order, etc) and etc.
Things done in script are character speech, NPC interaction with triggers (for example walking somewhere stopping to talk to another NPC, then run somewhere, scripting is used for timing), triggers or events in general and enemy stats (health, speed, accuracy, sometimes logic for said character).
The reasons you list are all valid reasons for using scripting languages in games. I'd also add another reason though: different languages are better suited to different kinds of programming tasks and a high level scripting language allows you to write parts of your game in a language that might be a better fit than C++.
The main reasons C++ is widely used in games are performance, easy access to low level native APIs or hardware (on consoles) and inertia - most games are written in C++ so most third party libraries and middleware for games are written in C++ and most easily interfaced with from C++. For many tasks however higher level languages like Python, C# or Ruby have programmer productivity benefits over C++ that can outweigh the advantages of C++ for code that is not performance critical or does not have to interface with native APIs.
A well designed C++ game engine with a high level scripting language can give you the best of both worlds - the performance and low level access of C++ where it's most needed and the productivity benefits of a high level language where they are most needed.
As a matter of fact, almost all MMORPG game servers are programmed in script.
All the C++ engin will embed a script language for logic handling, lua is a suitable script language for it.
In bigworld, python is the default embed language.
And node.js is also a good candidate for game server programming. Because its network io ability is superior. There is an open source framework in node.js:
https://github.com/NetEase/pomelo/
I've found it unhelpful to use scripts, both when I was employed in a large game studio and in my work as an indie developer. On the other hand I have friends who've used professional-grade, modern engines with scripting technology successfully. As you're doing indie game development on your own (or in a small team), I think you should avoid it. The main reasons are:
It adds overhead pretty much everywhere: one more language to master (per developer in the team), performance is slower than native, and the API the weakest link which means you often need to rebuild the binary anyway.
The only real gain with a higher-level language is less development hours up front (if you're using a mature engine), but in my experience that time is eaten up by time-consuming bug-smashing in the end.
Many game scripting languages uses dynamic typing (Lua, Stackless Python, Pawn), which I find error-prone compared to statically typed languages. If you too feel it's only good for simple things, you might as well do it natively instead.
As a side-note I do find game scripting languages exceptionally useful, but only for quick-hack/prototype apps, not for huge components within games. See my answer here.
I'm not convinced scripting interfaces for games you write yourself are so useful. I did some work on Freeciv once, and immense effort went into enabling "modding" using the scripting interface. A feature that seemed little used. I think there is a danger of the inner platform effect. You don't need a scripting language to customize your game: you already have a perfectly good programming language (C++, in your case) for doing that. It's a WTF.
What should I use scripting in my game for? And why?
As everyone (including you) has said, scripts make your game easier to edit. On a larger team scripting also has a very good productivity effect: the tech-savy folks can continue to polish the engine, while the creative people can work on the actual game, and the two teams don't have to get in each other's way.
Do I need use scripting languages if I'm working alone or with programmers as opposed to Devs?
You don't need it and depending on what you're final goal is, it might actually be a waste of time to implement scripting. I also develop a 2D scriptable game atm; I'm alone but I'm making it scriptable also as a personal challenge and also because I want the game to be easily modifiable.
What scripting language 'should' I use if I were to be making platformers, RPGs, or what-have-you?
The top two most popular options are Lua and Python. Most people recommend Lua because it's slightly faster. I went with Python because it has (native) support for classes — which works well with my existing C++ architecture — and also because I find it to be a much more enjoyable language to work with.
Okay, I know this is a bit dead, but I have to say this. There is literally no such thing as programming without scripts. It honestly doesn't matter if you write them in yourself or not, fact is, somebody wrote those scripts. Like ruby, in order to use it, you need a program like say notepad+ in order to set it up, or any computer based RPG Maker from enterbrain uses a form of ruby to operate. like it or not, when using computers to design a game, learn to script. Now as for the language, look some up and try different ones out. Don't cheap out with using a pre compiled engine, just work from scratch. trust me, you will be better off. I am still trying to decide which I like better, Lua(C++) or Ruby. I may just use pure C++
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Which sector of software industry uses C++?
C++ was for many years the holy grail of mission critical high performance development. However, it seems that for the past 10 years like much of the development world has moved to Java and C#. My quesiton is this, is C++ effectively relegated to embedded systems, OS, Browser and other special purpose development? Should I let this skillset go the way of the VB 6 and other skillsets that are no longer showing the same level of demand and value in the market? I love C++ and would love to update my knowledge in it, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to apply it to common business problems today.
Regards.
First of all, I doubt anybody can give a definitive answer -- there's just no way to tell exactly how much any particular language is really used. Nearly anything you can measure is a secondary measurement, such as how many people are advertising jobs using that language. The problem is that this tends to show relatively new languages as dominating to a much greater degree than is real.
That said, my belief is as follows. At one time, C++ was the hot new language on the block, and there was a bubble when it dominated the market. That bubble deflated quite a while ago. Since then, use of C++ has been growing on an absolute basis, but the market has been growing (quite a bit) faster so its shrinking on a relative basis.
There are a couple of reasons this doesn't show up in most secondary measures such as job advertisements though. A couple of the obvious ones include:
Many teams producing C++ have now had years to "settle in", so the turnover rate is relatively low.
It's now well established where it's used, so positions tend to be filled by internal promotions.
There's another effect I almost hesitate to mention, but it's true no matter how little a lot of people like it: there are both programmers and managers who are more excited about "new" than effective. This leads to a large group of wannabes who are constantly on the move to the latest and greatest "technology" (whether that happens to be a language, framework, platform, or whatever). They get a job, loaf (or worse, actually write some code), then move on to their next victim...er...employer. They cause a lot of "churn", and inflate the number of job advertisements, but produce little or nothing of any real value. That group moved from C++ to Java a long time ago, and have long since moved from Java to C# to Ruby on Rails to Hadoop to whatever the managers are excited about this week.
Lest I sound excessively negative, I should add that along the way, a few of them really find something they're good at, and (mostly) tend to stay with that. Unfortunately, for every one who does, there are at least five more new graduates to join the throng...
"C++ effectively relegated to embedded systems, OS, Browser"
"other special purpose development"
You mean 99% of the code people run on a daily basis?
C++ is still heavily used in many mission critical financial applications. For example, most of Bloomberg's platforms are based on C++ with very little front end in other languages. Many investment banks and hedge funds use algorithmic trading systems written completely in C++ (e.g., Tower Research Capital, Knight Capital, etc.).
If you've been out of C++ for a while, you may need to get used to a whole bunch of now-standard libraries. When I was doing most of my C++, STL was fairly new and you either adopted the Microsoft libs or did not. If I went back to C++ now, I'll have to learn all the new libraries to be effective.
I think most of the movement to other languages is related to web development and web-centric development. The main exception to that would be Google, which still primarily use C++ and Python.
C++ is still valuable for many high performance apps. There are other technologies, and depends on the situation different languages are better suited for your needs. But if you want strong performance, good control of what your code is doing, and flexible networking and programming stack, C++ is still a good choice.
A better suggestion is: let the problems come to you and find the language that best suites the situation, rather than take a language and go look for problems.
Still: if you know C++ well, you can learn/program in anything.
To this day, C++ is the only language which is both object oriented and compiled (or at least, which has a mature ecosystem of optimizing compilers). Which leaves it as the sole choice for most large scale, compute-intense projects.
To me the prominent example is games and game engines - these are huuuuuge projects that squeeze machines for milisecond-fractions. MS is trying to get some traction for XNA (a managed game-dev framework - basically a DirectX wrapper ), but most probably would never get any for AAA game productions.
If I take a look at the applications I have installed on the laptop I am writing this message on, I see a lot of C/C++ and few (if any) managed apps. Examples? Google Chrome, Firefox, iTunes, uTorrent, Spotify, Picasa, Google Earth, OpenOffice, Notepad++, IrfanView... this list goes on and on. I write desktop applications for a living, which are installed on thousands of PCs worldwide, and C++ is still my language of choice. The lack of dependencies (WTL is your friend) is a massive plus IMHO (and that of my customers I should add!.) YMMV though - as a seasoned developer I think I am productive enough in C++, but I can't speak for everybody.
It hasn't gone away if you need to do something really, really fast. If "fast enough" is OK, then C# and Java are fine, but if you have a calculation that takes hours or days, or you need something to happen on the microsecond timescale (i.e. high frequency trading) C++ is still the language to use.
More often than not, we get lost in the hype cycle. First there was Java, then came PHP, and currently is Python. But the fact of the matter is development of general purpose desktop application still requires use of libraries like Carbon/Cocoa for mac, GTK/QT for Linux, MFC for Windows. All of which are C/C++ based. So are most applications written for these platforms. So calling C++ as being relegated to embedded is not right, although yeah its being extensively used now, unlike earlier when it was just assembly or C at the max. In my opinion, if you want a high performance application with great looking GUI, it still has to be done in C/C++.
Different languages are prevalent in different domains. It is interesting that you think it might be rendered unimportant by being relegated to embedded systems when in fact that is where most software development occurs; at least in terms of number of projects/products.
There are many ways of measuring, and a number of them are presented here: http://langpop.com/. The evidence suggests that C++ remains important.
I'm not sure whether the gaming industry falls under "general purpose development", but if you want to develop anything that you intend to get working on more than a single console, C++ is what's for lunch. While many gaming and 3D libraries have extensions for other languages, they -all- have extensions for C/C++.
C++ is still used everywhere you want the best performance. Its major advantage is that you can use literally for everything. In addition to what other people have said you can also use it to power websites, for instance OkCupid uses it almost exclusively.
As the recent Hip Hop of Facebook shows, in the end, if you can afford it (ie. you have a large and competent team) you can always gains something using it. Then it also a matter of scale, other than industry.
C++ is still very popular. For instance, combined with Qt it is often used.
C++ is usually used for systems work, generally defined as software where the UI is not central, not application work -- where the UI is central. So, for general business use it's probably not very interesting and those problems are better solved with a higher level language. However, there will always be low level systems work to be done, and C or C++ is the practical answer for those problems right now.
As a general development language? Well, it depends on your industry, but I've worked in two different industries and there is always plenty of C++ work:
Telecoms
Embedded devices often use C and C++ for core services
Network equipment, often very complex, heavily utilize C++
Software apps that work with hardware will often be written in C++
Financial Services
Trade Execution systems are often in C++. You cannot have your garbage collection kick in when you're executing an order for a customer.
Algorithmic and high-frequency trading systems are usually in C++
General trading systems that do not have strict speed requirements seem to be in C++ and Java, with C# starting to show up as well.
Administrative applications tends to be written in Java, VB, or C# these days
Recently there is a trend towards functional languages for quantitative analysis, so F# and Haskell are starting to appear, and SAS and Matlab are always common too
I read somewhere that Nyse/Euronext uses Java, but that they disable the garbage collector and run on servers with insane amounts of memory.
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Let's say you have a company running a lot of C/C++, and you want to start planning migration to new technologies so you don't end up like COBOL companies 15 years ago.
For now, C/C++ runs more than fine and there is plenty dev on the market for it.
But you want to start thinking about it now, because given the huge running code base and the data sensitivity, you feel it can take 5-10 years to move to the next step without overloading the budget and the dev teams.
You have heard about D, starting to be quite mature, and Go, promising to be quite popular.
What would be your choice and why?
D and Go will probably just become as popular as Python and Ruby are today. They each fill a niche, and even though D was supposed to be a full-fledged replacement of C++, it probably will never acquire enough mass to push C++ away. Not to mention that they both aren't stable/mature enough, and it's unknown whether you'll have support for these languages in 10-20 years for the then-current hardware and operating systems. Considering that C/C++ is pretty much the compiled language and is used in the great majority of operating systems and native-code applications, it's very unlikely that it'll go away in the foreseeable future.
C and C++ are a pretty much unbeatable combo when it comes to native/unmanaged/"lowlevel" languages.
Not because they're the best languages, far from it, but because they're there, they do the job, and they're good enough. There's little doubt that D, for example, is better than C++ in most respects. But it fails in the most important one: Compatibility with all the existing C++ code. Without that requirement, most of that code would be written in a managed language today anyway. The only reason so many codebases use C++ today is because they used it last year, and it'd be too much of a pain to switch to something else. But if and when they switch, they typically don't switch to D. They switch to C# or Java or Python.
The problem for D and other "upcoming" languages competing for the same niches, is that while they're better, they're not groundbreaking enough to motivate people to actually switch to them.
So C and C++ are here to stay. C is unlikely to evolve much further. It is as it is, and one of the niches it has to fill is "simplicity, even for compiler writers". No other language is likely to beat it in that niche, even if they never revise the standard again.
C++ is evolving much more dramatically, with C++0x getting nearer, and they've already got a huge list of features they want to do afterwards. C++ isn't a dead end in any way.
Both languages are here to stay. Perhaps in 50 years other languages will have replaced them, but it won't happen this decade.
I currently use D regularly. I wouldn't recommend it yet for people writing production code because it's too bleeding edge. I get away with it because most of my code is research prototypes in bioinformatics. However, the language is starting to stabilize. Andrei Alexandrescu is releasing a book titled "The D Programming Language" next March, and right now there is a push to stabilize the spec for version 2 of the language in time for the book.
While D is not a formal superset of C, it is what I'd call an idiomatic superset except for the lack of a preprocessor. In other words, any code written in C proper (ignoring the preprocessor), can be trivially translated to D without a redesign, because C concepts like pointers and inline ASM are there and work the same in D as in C. D also supports direct linking to C code and the D standard library includes the entire C standard library.
Also, despite D's lack of libraries because it is still a bleeding edge language, it's a library writer's dream because of its metaprogramming capabilities. If it takes off, it will probably have some pretty impressive libs. For a preview of this, see std.range or std.algorithm in the D2 standard library (Phobos). As another example, I implemented an OpenMP-like parallelism model (parallel foreach, parallel map, parallel reduce, futures) as a pure library in D, without any special compiler support. (See http://cis.jhu.edu/~dsimcha/parallelFuture.html)
Given that you're mostly interested in the long term, I'd say give D 6 months to stabilize (given Andrei's book and the current push to stabilize the language, version 2 should be stable by then) and then take a hard look at it.
Edit: Now that the core language spec is relatively stable and the focus has turned to toolchain and library development, I would recommend D for small production projects unless you are in a very risk-averse environment. Larger projects that absolutely must have good toolchain and library support should still wait, though.
If you believe in the lean manufacturing principles, you should strive to "decide as late as possible". The moment should be the last responsible moment, meaning the moment at which failing to make a decision eliminates an important alternative.
I think this principle can be applied to your situation. Instead of committing now to a language (that you don't even know will be around in 10 years), you should keep your options open. Maybe refactor some of your code so it is a bit more generic or is built on more abstractions, so that when it is indeed required to migrate, the process will be easier.
Stick with C and C++. I don't see it going the way of COBOL, it runs as well as anything, and you'll have no problem finding people to code in C and C++.
C++ -- it is relatively young and updated... It has a big number of compiler vendors and got
improved all the time.
C -- it would live for a long time filling the gap between assembler and higher level languages. It is also very simple and easy to implement language, so it would remain the
first language for various "strange" architectures like embedded or extremely new ones.
D is promising but still very new and unstable specifications and libraries.
Go was born few weeks ago... Never use anything of version 0 for big important projects. Also it is significantly more limited the C++ or D.
2019 update: C++ will stay around for the next 10 years... (if not, I will correct this answer, when it will not be relevant any more....)
the reason companies works with COBOL today is b/c they already have millions of COBOL code written. if the could throw it - they will do it at once, on the other hand - companies work with C/C++ as part of their needs and new projects using this language b/c they can't / don't want to use java/c# any other framework based language - so COBOL is not the analogy here.
Like dsimcha said the D way is currently risky. Yet the language has a huge potential, it is low-level and i've experienced drastically better productivity with D (instead of C++). Perhaps what people feel with dynamic languages.
Go is so much blog-marketed it seems like a joke to me.
Dispatching an interface method is not trivial, and actually slower than dispatching a regular single-inheritance method.
If you'd have a huge codebase the decision is of course more difficult, I would advise only to switch for new projects, not for existing ones.
I wouldn't concentrate on a language but more on the libraries surrounding it. C++ in combination with the boost libraries are an excellent choice. People who develop in C++ tend to have a better understanding of computing, I myself started of with Java which made my life easier by hiding a lot of fundamental stuff, which is good, however I only really started to understand programming once I learned C/C++ (pointers etc).
I do recognise that C++ can be hard (e.g. memory management) so I think it's good to have a 'add on' language where performance is not essential and readability (==maintainability) scores high: I recommend Python for this.
There are countless machines running C++ software, I don't see them shutting down all at once. If C++ will go in the way of COBOL there will be a huge market for application migration. There will be specialized tools developed to translate C++ applications to the popular language of the time (Z++ ???).
So I guess the best advice is to cross that bridge when you come to it.
Check out Intel® Cilk++ Software Development Kit if you want to spark your interest in C++/Multi-Core development. I don't see C or C++ going away anytime soon either.
Comparing C* to Cobol is questionable
Comparing C* to Cobol may lead to the wrong conclusion. C was perfect for its day, a huge leap forward on its introduction, and it still gets the job done today.
I would sum up Cobol on my most charitable day with "nice try".
C and C++ will survive for a long time because they fit the bill well as implementation languages. This won't ever really change.
Also, consider that the main negative issue with C/C++ is the lack of memory safety. This tends to be less and less of a problem as codes mature. This means there will not be a serious reason to replace the old codes.
I expect that software systems will grow outwards from C. Look at the hierarchy today:
application written in a framework such as Rails
application back-end written in Ruby, PHP, Python, C#, whatever
Ruby, PHP, Python, or C# run-time implementation (written in C*)
OS kernel (written in C89)
I don't think the old layers will vanish, and I think legacy higher layers written in C and C++ will simply be supported that way for an indefinite period of time, eventually being phased out for their replacements written in Ruby, Python, C#, or a future development.
We have no idea if Go will find acceptance. Just being by Google is probably not going to be enough.
D? Well, some nice things are being said about it but it won't be taking off either. No user base to speak of. D is #20 in popularity on the TIOBE Index, and dropping fast.
You may say that a language's popularity has little to do with how well it's suited for your company's work. But it has a lot to do with how easy it will be to find people qualified to program in it.
Java is on top and I would be surprised if it went far away in the next 20 years. It's not considered a systems programming language but performs well enough that there are few tasks you'd do in C++ that you couldn't in Java. Certainly these days nobody is willing to task human programmers with the job done (flawlessly and often more effectively) by the garbage collector. I for one considered Java a significant step up from C++ in terms of programming effectivity.
I'm quite impressed by Ruby. It's an elegant, expressive language: You can accomplish a lot with not too much code, yet that code is still mostly legible. One of Ruby's main principles is to be consistent and not hold surprises for the developer. This is an extremely good idea, IMO, and boosts productivity. At the time of the big Rails hype (which may still be ongoing), I made a wide berth around Ruby because its reference implementation is abysmally slow. However, the JRuby folks at Sun have made it blazingly fast on a JVM, so now it's definitely worth some consideration. Ruby provides closures and a good handful of functional programming capabilities (see below for why this important), though it's not really considered a FP language. TIOBE index: 10 and rising.
Something to consider for the future is the fact that CPU makers have run up against a performance limit imposed by physics. No longer is there a 30% faster CPU available every Christmas, as it was in the past. So now to get more performance you need more cores. Software development will need all the help it can get in supporting multi-core concurrent programming. C++ leaves you mostly alone with this, and Java's solutions are horrible by modern standards.
In view of this, there's a certain trend toward functional programming (which eliminates much of the hassle associated with concurrency) as well as languages with better concurrency support. Erlang was written specifically for this and for the ability to swap code in a running program (Ericsson wanted incredible uptimes). Scala is similar to Java but with much stronger support for functional programming and concurrency. Clojure, ditto, but it's a Lisp and it's not even in the top 50 (yet!!).
Scala was developed academics, and shows it: It's sophisticated and downright pedantic about data types; it tries to be the Swiss Army Knife of programming languages. I believe a lot of medium-smart programmers will have trouble getting a grip on Scala. Ruby is less FP and doesn't do so much about concurrency, but it's pragmatic, and fun and easy to get stuff done in. Also, running on the JVM, there is an enormous amount of code readily available in Java libraries, which Ruby can interface with. So:
My bet would be on Ruby, with an outside chance on Scala. But there are plenty of alternatives!
Java. For most low level things Java is fine these days. Why go with a partial solution to C/C++ such as D or Go when you can have something as safe and easy to develop with as Java? If you are looking for a real time solution, D and Go are definitely not it, not to mention they are probably even less supported than Java.
Java is now a system programming language. I don't see how you can consider anything with unsafe constructs such as pointers "next gen". The only reason those insecure constructs ever existed is because it was the pragmatic approach to building a turing complete language. There was no concern of representing the memory in discrete objects, because they just wanted to build something that worked. There are already hard and soft realtime applications in Java, a variety of hardware bytecode processors, and over 2 billion mobile devices running Java. At most all you would have to do is add some constructs for interoperability with devices, which wouldn't be that much code; even in C/C++ you'd still have to add these constructs...
What are you programming? 8-bit microcontrollers with 1KB ram? In that case, it would be pointless to use anything other than the assembler for that platform...
So I've been running into a debate at work about what the proper role of a scripting language is in game development. As far as I can tell there are two schools of thought on this:
1) The scripting language is powerful and full featured. Large portions of game code are written in the language and code is only moved into C++ when performance dictates that it's necessary. This is usually something like Lua or Unrealscript.
2) This scripting language is extremely limited. Almost all game code is in C++ and the language is only there to expose the underlying functionality to designers.
My frustration comes from seeing approach number two frequently abused, with large systems implemented in a language that does not have the features that make that code maintainable.
So I started out supporting approach number one, but after talking to some designers I realized that many of them seem to prefer number two, and its mostly programmers who prefer one.
So I'm still left wondering which approach is better. Am I just seeing bad code and blaming the tool instead of the programmer, or do we need really need a more complex tool?
The compile-link-run-test cycle for compiled C++ code when you're dealing with something as complex as a video game is very, very slow. Using a scripting engine allows you to make large functional changes to the game without having to compile the program. This is a massive, massive time savings. As you say, things that need optimization can be moved into C++ as required.
AAA engines are highly driven by scripting. Torque, used for Tribes II (and many other games!) is scripted, Unreal has Unrealscript and so on. Scripting isn't just for mods, it's key to efficient development.
I think designers need to see a language suitable for them. That's not negotiable: they have to spend their time designing, not programming.
If scripting allows fast development of product-worthy game code, then the programmers should be doing it too. But it has to be product-worthy: doing everything twice doesn't save time. So you have to keep scripting in its place. If a developer can script the inventory system in a week, or write it in C++ in a month, then you want full-featured scripting, if only to give you more time to hand-optimise the parts that might conceivably hit performance limits. So not the inventory, or the high-score table, or the key-mapping system, or high-level game logic like what the characters are supposed to be doing. That can all be scripted if doing so saves you any time at all to spend on speeding up the graphics and the physics: programmers need to be able to work out exactly what the bottlenecks are, and senior programmers can make a reasonable prediction what won't be.
Designers probably shouldn't know or care whether the programmers are using the scripting language to implement game code. They shouldn't have an opinion whether (1) is good or bad. So even if the programmers are right to want (1), why is this inconveniencing the designers? How have they even noticed that the scripting language is full-featured, if all they ever need is a fairly small number of standard recipes? Something has gone wrong, but I don't think it's that Lua is too good a language.
One possibility is that using the same scripting language for both, becomes an obstacle to drawing a sharp line between the interfaces used by designers, and the interfaces internal to the game code. That, as I said at the top, is not negotiable. Even if they're using the same scripting language, programmers still have to provide the designers with the functionality that they need to do their job. Just because designers use Lua to code up AI strategies and conversation trees, and Lua is full-featured language capable of writing a physics engine, doesn't mean your designers are expected to write their own physics engine. Or use more than 10% of Lua's capabilities.
You can probably do both (1) and (2), mind. There's no reason you can't give the programmers Lua, and the designers some miniature under-featured DSL which is "compiled" into Lua with a Lua script.
I think the balance you want is something to this effect: you want game logic in script, but game functionality in code.
One big big advantage of script is that you can set up waits easily. For instance:
enemy = GetObjectFromScene ("enemy01");
in 5 seconds { enemy.ThrowGrenadeAt (player); }
Just a contrived example. That kind of logic would be annoying to setup in C++. Script can make it easier to express this kind of logic, but you'd want the actual functionality (the functions it calls) to be in C++.
And script doesn't have to be slow. There are heavily scripted games running at 60fps on consoles, but it requires a good design and finding the right balance between your options 1 and 2 above.
I can't really see the argument that large amounts of scripted code is going to be superior to large amounts of C++. One could make the counter argument. I've seen terrible large projects written in scripting languages that started out with the scripting mentality--getting things done quick and dirty. This unfortunately doesn't scale well. There's really no way to make a code quality argument based solely on the programming language. People can write gobs of maintainable code in any language, compiled or scripted.
Anyway, its really impossible to know the line between your "approach 1" and "approach 2" without knowing where the performance bottlenecks are and what your users are going to most want to "script".
I would suggest an "approach 3" which is to do it all or in part in C++ and expose a clean SDK in C++. This would have the advantage of forcing you to write your code as if it were a user interface someone outside your organization has to use. It would hopefully cause it to be more maintainable AND have the added side effect of implementing your scripting interface for you. All your scripting interface would need to do now is forward to your SDK. Viola!
With this approach you avoid having to draw a line between the realm of what is "scripted" vs what is in C++. You and your users keep a choice to either add functionality in C++ with the SDK or use a scripting language.
As usual, I think the answer is "it depends."
There's NO WAY Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 could have been based primarily on scripting. Top-rated AAA titles must, by definiton, push the envelope of any platform they touch. This just can't be done with scripting.
Casual games, however, are a different story. Major game eninges like Unity have lots of scripting built in.
There is also a market for mods. A solid game engine with a good scripting environment can be a platform for tweaks, derivations, and in some cases altogether new games. Counter Strike is my personal favorite example. I think you're limited in this case to FPS run-and-gun type games.
So, there is a place for scripting in games but it will probably stay in the small/casual game and modder's space.
One of the best examples of scripting in action is Civilisation IV. It uses Boost Python. As a result, it is horribly slow. A clear counterpoint to the statement that "code is moved into C++ when performance dictates that it's necessary".
The proper way is to design an architecture up fron, and decide which problems are computationally hard and which are complex to specify up front. Graphics, physics, pathfinding, instant feedback on input, text to speech - all clearly computationally hard. "Friendly or hostile stance", "defend or attack", "spend or save" type AI decisions are all complex to specify up front.
The conclusion is that you want to expose capable, but soulless actors to your scripting code. The scripting code describes what the actors should do, but the C++ code takes care of the how.
With regard to the compile-link cycle, it's important to have a proper modular architecture. When you are working on the pathfinding logic, you should never have to compile graphics code. Also, tools like Incredibuild can help speed up compile times. Big game firms probably already have a render farm, which can double up quite well as a compile farm.
Saying that games should be done just with C++ (or claiming that AAA titles are done like that) is just being ignorant. Most of the games nowadays are scripted in a way or another, be it proprietary scripting language (UnrealScript), generic language (Lua, python, C#, Java etc) or data-driven (xml, proprietary binary format etc). Just make some research and you'll find out that most engines employ scripting in one form or another.
I think the question of whether to have 1) powerful and full featured scripting language vs 2) extremely limited scripting language is approaching the problem from the wrong end. The scripting environment (language or data-driven) should be designed so that it best supports the process of creating the game. The expressiveness of the system is crucial here: the designers and scripters should be able to easily solve the problems they have without too much headaches while they shouldn't be exposed to too complex system that they have difficulties understanding and learning. Often programmers (myself included) tend to design systems by making assumptions how it is going to be used and trying to ensure that all features between earth and heaven could be implemented, resulting in complex systems. Being overwhelmed by this complexity, the designers end up using the minimum to get the work done.
For example in our game (Rochard) we designed a fully expandable and scriptable data-driven AI system, but the level designers ended up using just the stock AI patterns because they didn't have time or effort to utilize the AI system to its fullest extent. So in the end I just created a good UI for choosing those stock AI patterns easily.
I'd say there is no silver bullet in this matter.
So I started out supporting approach
number one, but after talking to some
designers I realized that many of them
seem to prefer number two, and its
mostly programmers who prefer one.
This should make obvious sense: if the scripting language is "powerful and full featured", there is an onus on the designers to have to create the systems, since this opportunity is available to them. On the other hand, if the scripting language only exposes small details of the hard-coded game, then the programmers have to create those systems, since designers cannot. I'm not saying each side is lazy, but obviously both have individual skills the project requires them to focus on (since nobody else can do them as effectively), meaning there is always an interest in getting someone else to do a given task if possible.
And following naturally on from this, the proper role will depend on how the human resources in your company are laid out, in conjunction with any performance requirements of your game. Once you have an idea of how many people will need any sort of scripting, you'll know how much of the game will require it, and therefore can decide how how wide or narrow the interface needs to be. This contributes to what the 'domain' of the language would be, as mentioned by onebyone.livejournal.com above.
(For what little it's worth, I'm a professional game developer and also the moderator of the Scripting Languages forum on Gamedev.net.)
The game development community already uses scripting as a very common way of building user interfaces and tuning AI responses. You can find lots of info on sites like Gamasutra. The interesting thing is that standard languages are starting to replace custom interpreters.
Two of the best scripting examples in AAA games that come to mind are World of Warcraft (uses Lua) and EvE Online (uses Python). EvE uses scripting on the server-side too: they have a significant investment in Stackless Python.
Update: Performance will essentially be a non-issue due to multicores. Even low end machines will end up with more cores than the display and model updates need. You might as well spend one of those cores running a scripting solution for the UI.
As has been said before; use scripting for game logic, and C++ for game functionality. An example would be scripting a game mode, but using C++ for rendering.
If we split a game into two parts: The engine and the actual game (design).
A solid top class game engine is most likely written in C/C++ and some people even optimize further with assembler code. You can do a lot of neat really fast stuff for graphics and physics with specific CPU instructions. There is no way to get performance when rendering large landscapes or multiple complex objects from a scripting language only.
When it comes to the game itself where are a lots of aspects that can be done in slower but higher level programming languages. AI and other game logic can be written in script with success. It can speed up development and it opens up for modding and community expansions in a simple way.
I think the poster here is correct to favor method #1. It is a cleaner method and will yield better long term results despite the complaints of designers. In the end the code will determine good game programming from mediocre (bad).