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Would-be non-casuals: learn C. It’s a great foundation for everything else. This is coming from a guy who learned C as a kid, left college early, skipped the CS degree, and jumped straight into senior engineering positions. C helps you to understand how computers *think* at a high level, without getting stuck in ASM implementations. Very useful, even ten years later when most of my work is C++/C#.

As for the library? Awesome. Anything that eliminates boilerplate code is great, and anything you can point to and say “that came from successful title X” can help in innumerable ways. I’m totally gonna grab it. Probably not going to replace the reams of boilerplate I’ve written for plain-jane SDL, but hell – maybe it will! Exciting.

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@jalf: How very selective of you :) The part from which I quoted you specifically mention C. I’m merely defending C as a decent language to start with and from baseless and hollow attacks such as yours. The list of deficiencies as you like to put it also occurs with a broad range of much higher level languages – only when they crash and burn the reason can so often be much less clearer because of the level of abstractions.

“I’m sorry I stepped on your very sensitive language-toes.”

It’s amusing you may think you did, but no. We’re here at this point of the conversation because you make claims that are simply not true, from “nobody writes games in C” and after being told otherwise you go on to both excuse and marginalize its existence with another ludicrous claim of “crappy compilers” without qualifying that either; optimizations, allocations of registers, instruction scheduling, something, ANYTHING. It’s painfully obvious you’ve never used these “crappy compilers”. If you’re going to resort to *lying* about a language, compilers and their use, why should anyone believe anything else? I personally don’t find it difficult to champion Lisp, Lua, Smalltalk, etc without denigrating something like C/C++. It’s all kinds of absurd.

“Remind me, please, where in this thread was it said that the aim with this exercise was to get hired by your company?”

So it seems sarcasm is lost on you, the quip about Gamemaker was entirely rhetorical, and I’m certain most with the barest of cognitive function would be able to surmise I nor the company I work for is actually recruiting in this thread. lol!

I’ll just leave this, while I’d never recommend something like Gamemaker, I’d never dissuade someone from starting with *any* language either (C/C++/C#, java, python, ruby, assembler, you name it). Obviously learning curves vary, but it’s up to the programmer-to-be to choose with some facts and understanding. Not every would-be coder (thank heavens) desires to select a language/framework because he/she can crank out a Tetris or FF3 clone in 2 days with a handholding point-n-click UI.

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I’m sorry I stepped on your very sensitive language-toes. I didn’t mean to offend. I think of programming languages as tools to be used or discarded as convenient, and don’t worry about hurting their feelings. If you feel some personal bond with them, I’m sorry I was so blunt about C’s deficiencies. I can see how that would be akin to insulting your mother or girlfriend.

No, seriously, the exact same argument applies to C++, which is why I wouldn’t recommend that either for a beginner who just wants to try creating a few simple games.

Gamemaker. *facepalm*. Ooooookaaaaaaay. I’ll have to doublecheck if Gamemaker experience is a criteria our company looks for…

Remind me, please, where in this thread was it said that the aim with this exercise was to get hired by your company? Because I must have missed that memo. I thought it was about a few people wanting to learn programming so that they could slap together some relatively simple games for their own fun. For that, you don’t need C or C++. The point here is that for most hobbyists, even something as simple as gamemaker is sufficiently powerful.

Commercial games is obviously a different thing, and yes, having solid knowledge of both C and C++ would be a very good idea there. But nowhere in this thread did I see anyone ask “What should I do if I want to land a job programming for Stef’s company”. And so, naive as I am, I assumed that programming for your company is irrelevant to this discussion.

Did anyone say facepalm?

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“segfaults? Without learning about pointers? Without having to fret over out-of-bounds memory accesses? Heap corruption, memory management.”

Wow. You mention these as if they never happen if you use C++, how many commercial titles have shipped that need patches upon patches (PC/PS3/360 – built just about exclusively with C++/C#) because they crash and burn due to the very issues you mention.

“Yep, and I know people who have written games in Python, Haskell, Lisp”

That’s nice and all but diversionary. The point was you said NOBODY writes in C any more. This is not true, and your damnation of C is curiously amusing. C is valuable because its methodologies parallel the hardware itself (I think it’s important to have that fundamental understanding). But because C++ abstracts that away from you, C sucks, eh? :)

“C is far more common because of the utterly crappy compilers they tend to have for everything else”

What? The compilers are not even remotely crappy, and IDEs are used not unlike Visual Studio (VS for 360 work obviously). We’re free to use C++ (and do), no problem. More often on the portables these days a combination of C/C++, again no problem.

“have had pretty neat-looking games up and running in Gamemaker within three days”

Gamemaker. *facepalm*. Ooooookaaaaaaay. I’ll have to doublecheck if Gamemaker experience is a criteria our company looks for…

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I guess I’m no one. I’ve written a number of published handheld titles GBA/DS and 2 for PSP) in plain C

Yep, and I know people who have written games in Python, Haskell, Lisp and pretty much any other language you can think of. And until Quake3 or so, ID used C, but today, even they have switched to C++. My point was simply that it is a ridiculous statement, saying that there’s no point in learning a language just because few games are written in it. (And you’re right, on non-PC platforms, C is far more common because of the utterly crappy compilers they tend to have for everything else. But is that really relevant to someone considering learning programming on a PC?

Is that so?

Most likely, yes. How many people do you know who, starting completely from scratch, with no programming knowledge, had a game written in C done within a month or two? Not many. In C and C++, people tend to take quite a while just getting a good grasp of the language, before they’re able to make fancy things like graphical games.

On the other hand, I know people who, with absolutely no programming experience, have had pretty neat-looking games up and running in Gamemaker within three days. In Python within two weeks.

C and C++ require you to understand a lot of concepts that aren’t actually key to understanding programming. Learning two things at the same time is harder than focusing on one at a time. That’s why people generally get up to speed faster if they start with a clean, simple, well-designed language, and *then* move on to C/C++.

@Gap Gen: You can make games in Java just fine, and it’s been done before. For most hobbyists, the limitations won’t really matter. For someone writing Doom 4, or trying to squeeze a game onto a NDS cart, it’s going to get problematic, but if your ambitions are a bit lower than that, Java is going to work just fine.

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Actually, is there any problem with making games in Java, other than not really being geared towards it making executables? Sure it’s slower, but you can farm out intensive operations to a C plug-in or even the GPU (and it’s apparently better at OO than C++, which I can believe, plus you never get memory leaks)

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I viscerally disagree, this is absolute nonsense.

“Yeah, and no one really writes games in C either, so you shouldn’t learn that either. ;)”

I guess I’m no one. I’ve written a number of published handheld titles GBA/DS and 2 for PSP) in plain C (with some asm on the Ninty handhelds as well), and I’m not the only one to have done so (been programming since the Amiga). I would freely recommend anyone to start with C, but unlike yourself I would never discourage someone from starting with C++ either. The difficulties in transitioning from C->C++ vice versa most often stem from being hammered over the head with fallacies and the evils of the “other” language. If you’re half competent you’ll manage either way. If you start with C you’ll have a much better understanding of what goes on under the hood with the abstractions C++ employs. If you start with C++, you’ll get on just fine as well.

“Start with C (and then go through C++), and you’re right, it’s probably going to take a couple of years.”

Is that so?

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Theres really *no* lang that is appropiate to learn to program. So chose whatever you want, C, C++, Java, probablly not Java.

Theres probably no “good” or “bad” lang to use, other than DON’T COBOL, and DON’T FLASH.
* Flash is probably awesome If all you want is tiny casuals web games.

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Flash is a platform. Flash uses a language called ActionScript for logic. ActionScript is a language that started out being based on ECMAScript (basically JavaScript) but now has evolved into something more powerful and sophisticated including features such as classes and typing. From a learning point of view, ActionScript is probably a good place to start because it is quite high level and does not require any memory management. There is also a thriving community across several websites that provide a lot of help, support and ideas. E.g. http://www.flashkit.com/

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