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In game communities, there are lots of developers who spend time inquiring and researching about game writing platforms (languages, libraries, engines) but end

In game communities, there are lots of developers who spend time inquiring and researching about game writing platforms (languages, libraries, engines) but end up writing nothing. So a developer expecting somebody to "sell" them a language in order to write a game, will likely end up writing nothing. "Rust seems obstuse" doesn't mean anything. On the other hand, I personally think that Rust is not the most productive language, overall, for game development (I'm familiar with Rust gamedev). This consideration includes the hard truth that as of now, the game libraries are young and buggy. In an theoretical world, where all the languages have stable and equally functional game libraries/engines, in my opinion, the most productive language is something with deterministic (manual) memory management, but less memory safety (=overhead) than Rust, but that is still safer than C-family languages. I can picture D fitting this characteristics, but also other modern languages. This does not apply to areas where where safety is paramount (e.g. networking).

MrVandemar 4y ago
An excellent and considered reply. When I say that Rust seems obtuse, I mean I've been bashing my head against its philosophy and syntax for some time without reaching the magic "hey this works and I'm suddenly productive" summit (or at least plateau). I've come to the conclusion that it's not for me, but my interest in it stemmed from frustrations with Python and my memories of enjoying writing 'C' in the 90s. I find C++ a language without an underlying philosophy and seems like a horrid patchwork of things; Java is frustrating and verbose. C# is very Windows centric, which I'm not adverse to exactly, but I don't run it. Various other languages I've thought about and discarded. I was toying with Go as that seems to have many fans, and seems to have wheels, but I'm cautious given some of the criticisms it comes under. D was not on my RADAR, but now I'm quite interested and probing its good and bad points. It looks promising on a casual look. You're right, of course, "lots of developers who spend time inquiring and researching about game writing platforms (languages, libraries, engines) but end up writing nothing. " Most people come from the point of view of they enjoy playing games, so they think they would enjoy writing them. Same with reading novels/writing them, and probably many other spheres of human creative endeavor. I'm not saying I'm immune from this kind of thing, but my ideas are very modest, and if I fail to implement my game, no harm will come from it; the opposite in fact, as the very act of solving programming problems is as productive as solving a crossword puzzle, and will serve, if nothing else, to keep my mind sharp (as my current job requires no programming ability whatsoever). I don't enjoy playing games, I'm tremendously bad at them and so don't get much positive re-inforcement on them as an enjoyable activity. But programming is fun, and that's what I'm looking for.

MrVandemar 4y ago

An excellent and considered reply. When I say that Rust seems obtuse, I mean I've been bashing my head against its philosophy and syntax for some time without reaching the magic "hey this works and I'm suddenly productive" summit (or at least plateau). I've come to the conclusion that it's not for me, but my interest in it stemmed from frustrations with Python and my memories of enjoying writing 'C' in the 90s. I find C++ a language without an underlying philosophy and seems like a horrid patchwork of things; Java is frustrating and verbose. C# is very Windows centric, which I'm not adverse to exactly, but I don't run it. Various other languages I've thought about and discarded. I was toying with Go as that seems to have many fans, and seems to have wheels, but I'm cautious given some of the criticisms it comes under. D was not on my RADAR, but now I'm quite interested and probing its good and bad points. It looks promising on a casual look. You're right, of course, "lots of developers who spend time inquiring and researching about game writing platforms (languages, libraries, engines) but end up writing nothing. " Most people come from the point of view of they enjoy playing games, so they think they would enjoy writing them. Same with reading novels/writing them, and probably many other spheres of human creative endeavor. I'm not saying I'm immune from this kind of thing, but my ideas are very modest, and if I fail to implement my game, no harm will come from it; the opposite in fact, as the very act of solving programming problems is as productive as solving a crossword puzzle, and will serve, if nothing else, to keep my mind sharp (as my current job requires no programming ability whatsoever). I don't enjoy playing games, I'm tremendously bad at them and so don't get much positive re-inforcement on them as an enjoyable activity. But programming is fun, and that's what I'm looking for.