T w e n t y S i d e d

So why do we need a new language for games? Isn’t the world full of languages at this point? Is it really true that in all the dozens of active languages out there, none of them is suitable for making video games?

A year ago Blow gave a talk where he said he didn’t want to use any of the extant languages because they contribute to an ongoing “general insanity” going on in software development. It’s a long and multi-faceted argument, but if I had to boil it down to a soundbite I’d say that there’s a general desire to hide the hardware away behind abstractions and this is making our software slow.

I’m not qualified to support or refute that argument, so if you think Blow is wrong then you’ll have to take it up with him. I’m going to come at the argument from a different angle…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game Programming Vexations Part 2: The Four Challenges of Game Development”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

My programming posts are always popular, which is strange because it seems like they shouldn’t work at all. I don’t know where I got the idea to write about the fussy details of programming in casual, non-technical terms. It seems like non-programmers would be bored by all the stuff that has no bearing on their lives, and programmers would be irritated by all the entry-level explanations for things they already understand. But for whatever reason, both kinds of people show up for these articles.

Whichever group you belong to, buckle up. I expect some of this to get pretty controversial by the standards of programming flame wars, and I think I’m going to need to be more technical than usual.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game Programming Vexations Part 1: Five Years Later”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.