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I know Godot team is very committed to GDScript, but I find it hard to see it as anything but a toy scripting language. Seems like it would be a real mess with

I know Godot team is very committed to GDScript, but I find it hard to see it as anything but a toy scripting language. Seems like it would be a real mess with a big, complicated project. Godot w/ C# however is very nice and gives you a lot of flexibility with your architecture and code.

Lucasoato 3y ago
They should remember that even Unity had to deprecate the Boo language to go forward :)
- mattigames 3y ago
  Both Boo language and UnityScript were deprecated (the later was oftenly mislabeled as JavaScript, creating quite a confusion between newbies)
- dandellion 3y ago
  Not sure Unity is a good role model... Also, having used both Boo back in the day and GDScript in Godot more recently, I'd say that one big difference between the two is that Boo was really bad, and GDScript is actually pretty good.
  - eddythompson80 3y ago
    What's wrong with Unity from a technical prospective not marketing/business prospective?
    - cfgyuiikhg 3y ago
      It was fat and glitchy from the get go.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Unity got a stigma for delivering half baked features and dropping support for existing features without a replacement. The epitome of this was where in Netcode, where I believe they had no officially supported solution despite the engine having 2 different packages which were both half-baked, all while the DOTS variant was far from release. I don't think Godot should go that route.
dandellion 3y ago
They're commited to GDScript because it's a great scripting language. I started with Godot expecting to switch to C# pretty fast because I'm already familiar with C#, but I was pleasantly surprised with GDSCript. And I'm a programmer with more than 10 years of experience. For people who are still learning it must feel like the difference between trying to learn to ride a bycicle vs learning to fly a boeing 777.
- krapp 3y ago
  GDScript not a great scripting language. It's an adequate scripting language whose only benefit is native integration with the client, and guaranteed support in perpetuity. But there is nothing about it that's better than any other scripting language. No one would choose to use GDScript as a general purpose programming language. Other scripting languages are also easy to learn. Vanilla Javascript is much easier than GDScript. And so is Lua. Kids learn coding in Lua. Even Python isn't that difficult compared to C#.
  - dandellion 3y ago
    I'd argue it's better than Boo and better than Blueprints. Maybe even JavaScript, because JS has made itself very useful as time has passed but as a small scripting language embedded in browsers it sucked. It's only benefits are native integration with the client, and guaranteed support in perpetuity, and it's easy to write, and easy to learn, and teach, it almost never surprises you in ugly ways (which is awesome), it comes with a good enough debugger, its library pretty much covers what you need to make your average indie game... But what did the romans... I mean, GDScript, ever do for us?
    - krapp 3y ago
      It's like you believe GDScript is the only language for which any of these features are possible. Other languages are also easy to write, learn and teach. Integration with the client is an implementation, not language, issue. Support is a business issue. Debugger quality is orthogonal, and you can make a game in assembly if you want (Railroad Tycoon.)
gustavus 3y ago
> but I find it hard to see it as anything but a toy scripting language. Seems like it would be a real mess with a big, We are talking about GDScript not JavaScript.... Oh wait, the parallels are remarkable Simple language designed to be easy to learn: Check Turns large codebases into a tangled lovecraftian mess of spaghetti code: Check Likely to be someone's first introduction to programming languages: Check Honestly reading the criticisms of GDScript so far is convincing me more and more that Godot is quickly going to become the next big thing, especially if the developers can figure out how to get people to use it for thier first programming project. After all most people I know who got into development started because they wanted to make their own video game.
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  As others have mentioned, JavaScript also has had over 20 years of serious investment from the best minds in the industry to improve it. We now have V8, TypeScript and plethora of tools that make writing serious applications possible or even preferable. I seriously would take TypeScript over most languages any day. How likely would you say the same effort is gonna go into GDScript?
  - gustavus 3y ago
    Well that's a point a lot of other people have raised and is the one I am trying to make, Godot and the associated ecosystem could become like the next generations Javascript. Companies didn't start investing an enormous amount of time and effort into improving JS because they wanted to, they did it because they adopted it and then ran into cases where they needed the performance. My point being that a lot of the concerns are not foundational to Godot and GDScript and can be improved if there is an investment. But that investment will come with adoption, not the other way around.
    - krapp 3y ago
      Javascript only got the investment it did because it was the only language that would run in a web browser, when the web suddenly became a billion dollar business and javascript developers were a dime a dozen. Godot is able to support multiple languages. The goal should be improving and expanding language support, not repeating the necessary evil of making Javascript the One True Programming Language.
headcanon 3y ago
I too found it a bit cumbersome past a certain code size. A lot of games don't necessarily need a lot of raw or complex code to run though, so the 1st class benefits of GDScript start to shine, like the native debugger, autocomplete, Godot-specific accessor syntactic sugar. Its hard to compete with an almost 25 year old battle-tested language, but given the domain and the team size, its a good product and worth pursuing IMO. With that said, I wouldn't want to give up the ability to have C# interop when I need it, and I imagine many games would need to be rewritten in C# after a certain point.
- dandellion 3y ago
  It's probably not ideal for large projects, but it adds huge value for small ones, and for people who are learning, and I'd expect probably even in larger projects if combined with C++, C# or Rust. It's miles better than the joke Unity had that was called Boo. I also like it a lot better than Blueprints in Unreal while still remaining extremely simple, although I can see how Blueprints can be better for more visual people.
- janosdebugs 3y ago
  I concur. I believe GDScript should be split from Godot itself and support should be added for third party IDEs. It has a lot of hard-coded things specific to Godot in it and it suffers from it. The built-in code editor has a very confusing layout and its built-in code editing functions will never be as powerful as providing a language server to a dedicated IDE.

Lucasoato 3y ago

They should remember that even Unity had to deprecate the Boo language to go forward :)

mattigames 3y ago
Both Boo language and UnityScript were deprecated (the later was oftenly mislabeled as JavaScript, creating quite a confusion between newbies)
dandellion 3y ago
Not sure Unity is a good role model... Also, having used both Boo back in the day and GDScript in Godot more recently, I'd say that one big difference between the two is that Boo was really bad, and GDScript is actually pretty good.
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  What's wrong with Unity from a technical prospective not marketing/business prospective?
  - cfgyuiikhg 3y ago
    It was fat and glitchy from the get go.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Unity got a stigma for delivering half baked features and dropping support for existing features without a replacement. The epitome of this was where in Netcode, where I believe they had no officially supported solution despite the engine having 2 different packages which were both half-baked, all while the DOTS variant was far from release. I don't think Godot should go that route.

dandellion 3y ago

They're commited to GDScript because it's a great scripting language. I started with Godot expecting to switch to C# pretty fast because I'm already familiar with C#, but I was pleasantly surprised with GDSCript. And I'm a programmer with more than 10 years of experience. For people who are still learning it must feel like the difference between trying to learn to ride a bycicle vs learning to fly a boeing 777.

krapp 3y ago
GDScript not a great scripting language. It's an adequate scripting language whose only benefit is native integration with the client, and guaranteed support in perpetuity. But there is nothing about it that's better than any other scripting language. No one would choose to use GDScript as a general purpose programming language. Other scripting languages are also easy to learn. Vanilla Javascript is much easier than GDScript. And so is Lua. Kids learn coding in Lua. Even Python isn't that difficult compared to C#.
- dandellion 3y ago
  I'd argue it's better than Boo and better than Blueprints. Maybe even JavaScript, because JS has made itself very useful as time has passed but as a small scripting language embedded in browsers it sucked. It's only benefits are native integration with the client, and guaranteed support in perpetuity, and it's easy to write, and easy to learn, and teach, it almost never surprises you in ugly ways (which is awesome), it comes with a good enough debugger, its library pretty much covers what you need to make your average indie game... But what did the romans... I mean, GDScript, ever do for us?
  - krapp 3y ago
    It's like you believe GDScript is the only language for which any of these features are possible. Other languages are also easy to write, learn and teach. Integration with the client is an implementation, not language, issue. Support is a business issue. Debugger quality is orthogonal, and you can make a game in assembly if you want (Railroad Tycoon.)

gustavus 3y ago

> but I find it hard to see it as anything but a toy scripting language. Seems like it would be a real mess with a big, We are talking about GDScript not JavaScript.... Oh wait, the parallels are remarkable Simple language designed to be easy to learn: Check Turns large codebases into a tangled lovecraftian mess of spaghetti code: Check Likely to be someone's first introduction to programming languages: Check Honestly reading the criticisms of GDScript so far is convincing me more and more that Godot is quickly going to become the next big thing, especially if the developers can figure out how to get people to use it for thier first programming project. After all most people I know who got into development started because they wanted to make their own video game.

eddythompson80 3y ago
As others have mentioned, JavaScript also has had over 20 years of serious investment from the best minds in the industry to improve it. We now have V8, TypeScript and plethora of tools that make writing serious applications possible or even preferable. I seriously would take TypeScript over most languages any day. How likely would you say the same effort is gonna go into GDScript?
- gustavus 3y ago
  Well that's a point a lot of other people have raised and is the one I am trying to make, Godot and the associated ecosystem could become like the next generations Javascript. Companies didn't start investing an enormous amount of time and effort into improving JS because they wanted to, they did it because they adopted it and then ran into cases where they needed the performance. My point being that a lot of the concerns are not foundational to Godot and GDScript and can be improved if there is an investment. But that investment will come with adoption, not the other way around.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Javascript only got the investment it did because it was the only language that would run in a web browser, when the web suddenly became a billion dollar business and javascript developers were a dime a dozen. Godot is able to support multiple languages. The goal should be improving and expanding language support, not repeating the necessary evil of making Javascript the One True Programming Language.

headcanon 3y ago

I too found it a bit cumbersome past a certain code size. A lot of games don't necessarily need a lot of raw or complex code to run though, so the 1st class benefits of GDScript start to shine, like the native debugger, autocomplete, Godot-specific accessor syntactic sugar. Its hard to compete with an almost 25 year old battle-tested language, but given the domain and the team size, its a good product and worth pursuing IMO. With that said, I wouldn't want to give up the ability to have C# interop when I need it, and I imagine many games would need to be rewritten in C# after a certain point.

dandellion 3y ago
It's probably not ideal for large projects, but it adds huge value for small ones, and for people who are learning, and I'd expect probably even in larger projects if combined with C++, C# or Rust. It's miles better than the joke Unity had that was called Boo. I also like it a lot better than Blueprints in Unreal while still remaining extremely simple, although I can see how Blueprints can be better for more visual people.
janosdebugs 3y ago
I concur. I believe GDScript should be split from Godot itself and support should be added for third party IDEs. It has a lot of hard-coded things specific to Godot in it and it suffers from it. The built-in code editor has a very confusing layout and its built-in code editing functions will never be as powerful as providing a language server to a dedicated IDE.