[Semi OT] Language for Game Development talk

[Paulo Pinto via Digitalmars-d]

Am 26.09.2014 23:32, schrieb "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" 
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>":
> On Friday, 26 September 2014 at 20:48:20 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> I started coding C++ on MS-DOS in 1993 with Turbo C++ 1.0 all the way
>> up to Turbo C++ 1.5 for Windows 3.x. Also used Borland C++ occasionally.
>>
>> I cannot remember any longer which version eventually added support
>> for exceptions, but it was already a Windows 3.x version I would say.
>
> Watcom had some exception support around 1993 according to
> comp.lang.c++, but it was probably not a big selling point to add it for
> other vendors on the MS platforms.

Watcom only became big on MS-DOS when they started offering a 32bit 
MS-DOS extender (remember those?). That feature, coupled with good code 
generation, made many game studios go for it.

But that is the only thing I know from it. In Portugal, Borland and 
Microsoft ruled the MS-DOS developer tools.

>
> I remember it was very difficult to find a good free C++ implementation
> though. Cfront was kind of annoying (and did not support exceptions
> either). In the free software movement C/Unix was the real deal and my
> impression was that C++ was not viewed as "cool", so it took a while for
> g++ to get the quality up to acceptable standards.
>

Back in those days I got to buy my tools. Only knew what FOSS was about 
around 1995.

In 1993 I got hold of Turbo C 2.0 and Turbo C++ 1.0, after a couple of 
years of doing Turbo Pascal, already with OOP using Turbo Vision.

C just looked stone age when compared with Turbo Pascal 6.0 features and 
I immediately switched to C++ after a few months of pure C.

Since then I have been on C++ troop ranks on the usual C vs C++ debates.

The sad thing is that nowadays many new C++ programmers behave against 
languages with automatic memory management, the same way we were seen by 
C programmers in those days.

You quite right about us not being cool in UNIX world. Outside of CORBA, 
it was always an uphill battle to use C++. Specially in the FOSS front.

I wrote one of the first tutorials on how to use yacc/bison and lex/flex 
with C++ instead of C, as I could not find any.

--
Paulo