5 ms·

Yea probably, I doubt that Minecraft would've been any less succesful written in C++ or any other language though.

akavi 6y ago
I've heard that the relative ease of decompiling Java might have contributed significantly, since it made mods much easier than they would've been with C/C++.
- Eldt 6y ago
  I'm confident the community driven modding contributed to Minecraft's success in a massive way.
- hoseja 6y ago
  Yeah, the game is almost source-available, thus almost infinitely moddable. Games that provide neat modding APIs (thinking Factorio, Rimworld) are, while commendable, inherently limited. If Minecraft were C++ you'd have to be able to recompile it yourself for equivalent moddability.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Could Minecraft have succeeded if it had a sub-level scripting language, like Lisp? The way that AutoCad uses it for its sub programming. Or the way Emacs uses Lisp for macro programming. Or did it need the full Java source code to re-mod the program?
    - smabie 6y ago
      AutoCad and Emacs aren't really comparable in their use of Lisp. Emacs is essentially an Elisp interpreter with some features for buffer management, while AutoCad just uses Lisp as a traditional scripting toolkit. Emacs is built with Elisp, AutoCad is not.
      - lispm 6y ago
        The C code in GNU Emacs does a bit more than implementing a 'Lisp interpreter'. https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/tree/master/src https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/tree/master/src Quite a bit of the actual GNU Emacs application is using libraries written in C. See for example the font code. https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/src/font.c https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/src/font.c This is different from some other Lisp systems, where only the base language runtime contains some C and/or assembler, and the actual application is mostly written in Lisp using an FFI (foreign function interface) for library calls. For example the GUI of Clozure CL is written in Lisp using an Objective C bridge, and not directly in Objective C and then called from Lisp. Thus Emacs Lisp is also somewhere in a continuum of implementation and extension language - using C not only for the Emacs Lisp language runtime, but also for basic application implementation...
  - 7786655 6y ago
    Minecraft isn't source available, it's just that people in the community have put a ton of effort into decompiling and deobfuscating it. Granted, this probably wouldn't have been possible if it were written in C++. (At least, this was how it was pre-Microsoft. I haven't followed it since then.)
the_af 6y ago
Depends. Success measured how? For the end user -- the players, that is -- it would likely make little difference. For the developer, it's very different. A game that doesn't get made at all is infinitely less successful than one that exists.

I've heard that the relative ease of decompiling Java might have contributed significantly, since it made mods much easier than they would've been with C/C++.

Eldt 6y ago
I'm confident the community driven modding contributed to Minecraft's success in a massive way.
hoseja 6y ago
Yeah, the game is almost source-available, thus almost infinitely moddable. Games that provide neat modding APIs (thinking Factorio, Rimworld) are, while commendable, inherently limited. If Minecraft were C++ you'd have to be able to recompile it yourself for equivalent moddability.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Could Minecraft have succeeded if it had a sub-level scripting language, like Lisp? The way that AutoCad uses it for its sub programming. Or the way Emacs uses Lisp for macro programming. Or did it need the full Java source code to re-mod the program?
  - smabie 6y ago
    AutoCad and Emacs aren't really comparable in their use of Lisp. Emacs is essentially an Elisp interpreter with some features for buffer management, while AutoCad just uses Lisp as a traditional scripting toolkit. Emacs is built with Elisp, AutoCad is not.
    - lispm 6y ago
      The C code in GNU Emacs does a bit more than implementing a 'Lisp interpreter'. https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/tree/master/src https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/tree/master/src Quite a bit of the actual GNU Emacs application is using libraries written in C. See for example the font code. https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/src/font.c https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/src/font.c This is different from some other Lisp systems, where only the base language runtime contains some C and/or assembler, and the actual application is mostly written in Lisp using an FFI (foreign function interface) for library calls. For example the GUI of Clozure CL is written in Lisp using an Objective C bridge, and not directly in Objective C and then called from Lisp. Thus Emacs Lisp is also somewhere in a continuum of implementation and extension language - using C not only for the Emacs Lisp language runtime, but also for basic application implementation...
- 7786655 6y ago
  Minecraft isn't source available, it's just that people in the community have put a ton of effort into decompiling and deobfuscating it. Granted, this probably wouldn't have been possible if it were written in C++. (At least, this was how it was pre-Microsoft. I haven't followed it since then.)

the_af 6y ago

Depends. Success measured how? For the end user -- the players, that is -- it would likely make little difference. For the developer, it's very different. A game that doesn't get made at all is infinitely less successful than one that exists.