2005-09-19

 

C++ clunkiness

Here I am coding various things and it suddenly struck me: C++ is pretty clunky. Now, I knew this to some extent for quite a time already, but the more I code C++ the more clunky it feels.

I admire it as a low-level language; it's very powerful and there's lots of unbelievable things you can do with it (think templates).

But still, it feels like a low-level one. I really want to code by "next project" (whatever that might be) in Lua, for example (especially now that LuaJIT is out).

# posted by NeARAZ @ 20:42
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YOu don't say what application domain you're going to use LUA for. I hope it isn't a game engine.

I just wasted a couple of years looking at other languages for game development (Lisp, Scheme, Ocaml, Lua, Haskell, Python, C#, Java, Erlang, etc.).

For game development the big problems are (a) all the other languages are at least 5x slower than C++ (no matter what they claim), (b) the only way to make them run fast is to code in a subset of the language that ends up being very similar to C in its expressive power (c) the IDEs for most of the other languages suck, (d) only C++ is widely available on consoles, (e) all the libraries you need are only available in C++ (f) nobody else knows the other languages.

So in the end I decided the theoretical 30% productivity boost from using a different language was going to be offset by the 400% productivity drain for having to mess with a poorer environment and having to spend more time interfacing to libraries and optimizing code...

Now if you're doing a web server or a business application or something, then never mind my advice.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 16:49  
I'd target realtime demos mostly, I guess. I'm usually not limited by the GPU (not CPU), so slower language won't be a big deal.

I'd keep the "engine" in C++ that does all low-level stuff, and code the rest in Lua. Well, that's almost how everyone already does - most of the game have a scripting language of some sort, for example.

The biggest drawback of another language to me seems the lack of good IDE/debugger.

Afterall, all this will/would be my freetime project, so I'm free to do whatever I want :)
# posted by Blogger NeARAZ : 17:02  
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