A Perspective on D from game industry

[Burp via Digitalmars-d]

>C++'s lack of finally didn't do any favors for exception 
>handling's popularity, either. (Has "finally" finally been 
>added?)

  Just noting: exceptions are rarely used in gamedev.
Also I agree with Bjarne RIAA is preferable to finally in the C++ 
context, finally makes more sense in a language with GC for 
dealing with none memory resources.

> You say the industry isn't likely to produce its own tools. 
> While I'm in no position to disagree, I am surprised to hear 
> that since the industry is known to produce some of its own 
> middleware. EA is said to have a fairly sophisticated in-house 
> UI authoring system, and of course they have Frostbite. Various 
> studios have developed in-house engines, and many of the 
> big-name ones (ex, Unreal Engine, Source, CryEngine) started 
> out as in-house projects.
>
> Would you say those are more exceptional cases, or did you mean 
> something more specific by "tools"?

  Yeah I should clarify. I'm not really speaking of middleware or 
engines; gamedev produces plenty of that, but always in bog 
standard C or C++.
  What I don't see, is the game industry producing a programming 
language that would be adopted outside of the company that 
produced it. Or assisting in the development of an existing one.
  Despite their being (guessing here) tens of thousands of 
professional C++ game developers, are any of them attending ISO 
C++ meetings? I doubt it.
If a game studio does produce anything resembling a 
language/associated tools it would very like proprietary.

-Take Epic, they created Unreal script(barf), nobody else uses 
it. Epic has abandoned it in UE4.
-Naughty Dog, they had a custom lisp based development at one 
point, nobody else used it, I believe they now use Racket to 
generate C++


>That is some *crazy*, impressive, *herculean*-effort stuff. 
>CLEARLY, significant parts of the game industry genuinely 
>understand the importance of investments into technology. And 
>yet...all the complaining they do about C++ and they *still* 
>won't write the language they want?

  Some of this comes from the proprietary tooling they end up 
using on each platform. It is supplied by the platform owner.
Language wise, you get a C++ compiler, and not necessary a very 
good one.

  Making a clean replacement for C++ isn't really enough.
Any C++ replacement has to interop well with C++ because of the 
existing mountain of C++ based middleware, libraries, and engines.

>Several *years* ago, I was under the impression that problem had 
>finally been changing? Is that not so?

  My experience is that is has changed for the better. I'm in the 
Western US though, and Manu is (I believe) in Australia.
If a studio tried to make me crunch extra hours without pay I'd 
just refuse, finding a different job isn't that hard /shrug.

> I switched to web development, where I work roughly 9-5 for a 
> good
> salary, and I never looked back.

  The state of California passed laws after the EA spouse case, so 
if you work in  California or for a CA based company they cannot 
legally make you work more than 40 hrs/week. Scummy places may 
try to get more hours out of you by applying peer pressure or 
some such crap, but they cannot legally do so-