[casual_games] languages... (that's an 's' at the end!)

[Lionel barret De Nazaris]

The low number of keystrokes could be a productivity advantage.
Once you're comfortable with a language, the main limit linked to the 
language is the number of keystrokes you need to do your stuff.
This is modified by the quality of the IDE, but a verbose language 
always makes you slower. Delphi is a good example of a verbose language. 
If I remember correctly, Ada is another. as Eiffel.
A corollary is the bigger the library the better as there is no need to 
re-code lists, hashmaps and so on.
Readability (or lack of) is also a productivity factor. See perl, lisp, 
etc.Even people comfortable with a language may take more or less time 
to understand a bit of code because of the readability of the language 
used. This could be modified by good or bad coding practice, but still...

Judged on this (double) criteria, Python is very good (although its IDEs 
are not as good MSVC, they cover most of what you need). Friends told me 
C# is also good. I feel that  C++ is worse than C#, but it's a 
superficial comparison, I don't work enough with them.

About your 5), why using DirectX ? for casual gamse, SDL seems a much 
better choice.

So for Python :
0) Language verbosity / readability : very good
1) IDE : fair
2) Debugger : fair/good
3) GUI : good
4) Language Flexibility  : very good
5) Interaction with APis : very good.



Phil Steinmeyer wrote:
> Yeah - I'm curious about claims of 25-50% decrease in coding time 
> (cited by at least one other poster as well).
>
> In my experience, assuming you've got a competent language with 
> functions, OO, etc that you can put your most common code into, then 
> overall code time is affected by
> 1) IDE (yes, you can usually use a 3rd party IDE, but a good, 
> integrated IDE is better)
> 2) Debugger (if it's good in general and supports recompile on the 
> fly, that's very good)
> 3) GUI layout tool (not as important for games, though, as most use 
> custom GUIs to avoid 'Windows' look)
> 4) Flexibility in how you do things (i.e. I'm not restricted to one 
> paradigm for accomplishing tasks)
> 5) Complexity of interaction with native APIs.  i.e. for games - 
> fighting with Direct X and the Windows API.
>
> I've tinkered with a few languages.  Using MSVC to write straight 
> C/C++, my current preferred method, scores high on #1, #2, and #4, 
> poor on #3, and fair on #5.  But I don't really see a way that another 
> language could dramatically improve my coding time for complex games, 
> as I spend very little of my coding time fighting with the tools or 
> the paradigms the tools limits me to.
>
> That said, I'm curious where others find 25-50% productivity gains in 
> other languages (not trying to start a flame war - just curious, as it 
> doesn't match my (limited) experiences with other languages).
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <johns at worldwinner.com>
> To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 8:44 AM
> Subject: Re: [casual_games] languages... (that's an 's' at the end!)
>
>
>> hi
>>
>> ( 05.10.06 19:31 -0400 ) Jim Perry:
>>> 1) Decrease in coding time - typically between 25 and 50%
>>
>> why do you think this is?
>>
>
>
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