Games people play

[Walter Bright]

J Duncan wrote:
> Excellent thread! Ive said before that D *SHOULD* be the future of game 
> development, and for some smart people it will be. Ive worked on several 
> commercial game projects and it occurs to me that a large bulk of our 
> engines were basically macros, templates, and patterns to implement many 
> of the idioms D currently contains (and sometimes java); basically, to 
> transform C++ into a 'better' language.

In big projects I've done in C++, a large part of the effort was doing 
infrastructure things, things that are built in to D. How many times 
have I done and redone and redone string classes, file handling, 
collections, symbol tables, etc.

> And we still use C++ almost 
> exclusively for performance reasons. This is why D should fill this 
> space quite well. I tend to have a more laid back approach to all of 
> this however, I believe we have a lot of work to do regarding the 
> language infrastructure, and once that is in place the popularity will 
> take care of itself. Build it and they will come.

Yes.

> Also I noticed one of the things sweeny mentioned in the DNG was 
> persistent objects.... something we may be heading towards with DDL. So 
> the future is pretty bright and I feel that once we have some of these 
> world class features like reflection etc, many people will take a 
> serious look at D. And on that note ive noticed some people will 
> probably *never* be convinced that a language is better for them than 
> c++, this has something to do with human nature that I dont fully 
> understand. This is a big reason I stopped worrying about D popularity.

A large fraction of current C++ developers will never leave C++, no 
matter what. Just like there are still people who never moved past C. 
They'll always search for, and will find, some niche reason why C++ is 
better no matter what advantages D has. That's just a fact of human 
nature, and shouldn't bother us.

> also as a big fan of QT, Id like to request a S&S mechanism; or some 
> sort of messaging pattern in the language. I think this would take D 
> "over the top!"

While I appreciate and enjoy the enthusiasm, this is deja vu all over 
again. My entire career in compilers (C, C++, D, Javascript, etc.) I've 
heard people say that "if only you implemented X, it will open the 
floodgates!" It never does, but what does work is to work with people 
who are *already* D users who are blocked by the lack of something. With 
S&S, I'd like to see first how far it can be pushed with existing D 
techniques.