OT: Flowers for the grave of MoM.

[Pirateiam]

I'd say that I am 90% sure I am never saying
I'd say again on this forum

Originally posted by Pirateiam:
I'd say that I am 90% sure I am never saying
I'd say again on this forum

I'd say you're right!

[Esben Mose Hansen]

If you want to know what Languages are used, try visiting www.sourceforge.net and check what the more popular projects are using. Here's the data from the 10 most active (I just picked a metric by whim). I must admit that even I am surprised by the breath of Languages used. Assembly was a definite surprise If you're going by this sample, you should learn PHP and C++

Java II
JavaScript II
PL/SQL I
ASP I
C# I
Cold Fusion I
PHP III
C++ III
C II
Assembly I
Python I

The projects were:
Gaim
Azureus - BitTorrent Client
ABC [Yet Another Bittorrent Client]
phpMyAdmin
eGroupWare: Enterprise Collaboration
PearPC
FileZilla
WinMerge
FCKeditor
Compiere ERP + CRM Business Solution

[Arryn]

High-performance device drivers are written in assembler, so that should not come as a surprise. Most professional game development, as well as semi-pro (unpaid) projects, is being done in C++ and a variety of tool/library-specific scripting Languages (for graphics, sound, etc.). Some amateurs have written games using MS-VB (which you'll note is missing from the list), but that language is really not suited to the task (or any truly serious work as it generates slow, bulky progs that are hard to maintain). But it's often the only language the programmers know (or own), so they use what they have (rather than be smart and learn a more advanced and truly useful language -- like C++).

Three-quarters of the Languages Mose cites are mainly used for DB connectivity or web-related scripting. Activities that are not really relevant to discussion of what are good Languages for game-related development.

The best language for cross-platform work is Java, assuming top performance is not an issue. If performance is an issue, C++ is then your best choice.

Of course, this entire topic is as likely to provoke an argument as discussing which political party can best represent the wishes of a nation. In other words, you'd do well to do your own research rather than accept what someone else says.

Statistics *always* lie. The only question is ever: for whom/what do the results favor? Only after you can answer that question can you then have any hope to derive meaningful value from any statistics ...

[Gandalf Parker]

Alot of assumptions there. As a programmer shouldnt the variables be defined first?
Games? Platforms? Cross-compatability? Programming langauge?

Based on certain pre-supposed concepts the answer can be quickly channeled into "only one obvious answer". Such as... if games refers to on-the-shelf boxed games, for computers, created by programmers who were hired to create them... If cross-compatable refers to PCs, maybe windows AND linux. If programming excludes high and low ends such as machine language, scripting Languages, development packages and engines...
then Id guess we are all on the right track for the answer.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
If you want to know what Languages are used, try visiting sourceforge.net and check what the more popular projects are using.

I sent him a PM with the same suggestion (to avoid giving an URL for SourceForge). And I stressed to be sure and check the real traffic.

Personally I feel that site shows ALOT of whats going on in the game development world. There are many Many MANY projects there which are listed as C/C++. But looking at the projects which have actually progressed, and even completed their projects, give a very different picture. Many of the projects seem to have chosen their language of choice based on desire and possible impressions/stereotypes of what it should be done in. I sometimes think that the automatic recommend of C/C++ for learning, doing, career, has done alot toward blowing off many projects/programmers which should have started with something else and maybe moved on to C/C++ later when they really knew why and had the motivation to accomplish it

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I think this quote from the Perl manual sums up perl, if anyone is wondering whether they should learn Perl:

Some operators return the first value in the list. Some operators return the Last value in the list. Some operators return a count of successful operations. In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.

Not for the formally inclined

The statistics I presented are totally useless except for fun. And as I did not make clear, I (randomly!) took the top 10 Active projects. So the Languages a listed are REALLY used, not just be some dead projects; but as the project list shows, there is not a single game among them.

I could have taken games; In that case the stats would have been

C++/C: IIIIIII
Java: IIII
Python: I
Other: I

I've lumped C++ and C as mostly they were listed together; if not C++ was listed exclusively.

Oh yeah, I looked up what project the assembly was used for. It was a PowerPC emulator .

Please remember that all this is for fun! I'm not out to get the (insert-obscure-language-here) folks

For the record, since the moon is ascending and the orbital is crossing Pluto and Sirius, I'm a C++ man today. I love the template meta-language. But next month, I'll love some other lanugage Python, maybe. Or Ruby.