Shlomi Fish has written a new essay titled "When C is the Best? (Tool for the Job)". Its theme is giving several reasons (besides high speed and low memory consumption) why some code should still be written in C.
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Member since:2005-07-06
To say "every language has its place" is almost tautological. The question isn't "does every language have a place", but "how big is the place for every language?" Moreover, the original statement is certainly no basis for the conclusion that one cannot argue that one language is objectively better than another.
Ultimately, a language is a tool. Tools can be compared, not just for specific tasks, but in general. Very few people would argue that a silicon-carbide drill bit isn't better than a regular steel one. A steel one will serve you just fine for making holes in cherry, but the silicon-carbide bit is "better" using objective metrics.
The metrics are what's important. The problem with most proponents of C or C++ is that their metrics are skewed. The only two metrics by which either of these languages will win comparisons are either performance-dominated ones or ones dominated by questions of cross-language compatibility. Moreover, even the performance-dominated metrics must be qualified to include "highly-tweeked" performance, because in many cases the fact that higher-level languages make it easier to implement fast (and therefore usually complex algorithms), offset their constant factor performance-losses. This wrinkle cannot be underestimated. It is precisely the reason that there exists massive amounts of slow software programmed in supposedly "fast" languages. For the vast majority of tasks (with games possibly being a genuine exception), a metric of this nature is unrealistic. Most software (remember, 90% of software is never shrink-wrapped!) doesn't care about constant factor performance losses. It's usually important, but usually, time-to-market, development cost, ease of maintainence, etc, rank higher.
The mentality of "only speed matters" is fading, and good riddence to it. It has dominated the industry for far too long. If your average C/C++ programmer designed airplanes, a 777 would go at Mach 6, but have a range of 1000 miles and cost a billion dollars per flight to operate!
Member since:2005-07-07
The mentality of "only speed matters" is fading, and good riddence to it. It has dominated the industry for far too long. If your average C/C++ programmer designed airplanes, a 777 would go at Mach 6, but have a range of 1000 miles and cost a billion dollars per flight to operate!
Reminds me of how much it cost to fly to the moon.
But I ask you this, name one single language that is better than C++ for writing games in? This is assuming that you want the current or next level of graphics speeds.
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2005-07-07
In Game Programming C++ is now considered the standard language to use. True many games have scripting languages built into them (mainly this helps the development process, it means that designers can use the script without bothering the programmers too much) but the bulk of a game is still in C++. Why is this? Because there is nothing better out there for Games. Nothing is advanced enough, fast enough and mature enough. Every language has its place, anyone who argues that one language is better than another is ignorant.