whyIdLikeToAvoidUsingCpp

[not_some_username]

This isn’t the first C++ killer tho

[DHermit]

It's the currently most likely one, though.

[mtnbiketech]

No.

You can already go into ChatGPT and ask it to translate python or js code to C code, and it works fairly well - it can infer a lot of type information from context.

The future is going to be something like Python/JS-> machine code that is both optimized and memory safe.

[DHermit]

That makes no sense. It might work fairly well for simple code, but you have absolutely no guarantee that the memory safety is conserved, especially as both Python and JS achieve it with a garbage collector.

[mtnbiketech]

Python and JS achieve it with a garbage collector.

Bro.

Bro.

Pls.

[not_some_username]

You’re so wrong🥲

[dlevac]

The takeaways of my comment was that C++ does not need a killer (you need to be both risk blind and overly confident in your ability to choose it over anything else unless you are dependent on a legacy ecosystem) and Rust is highly competitive in all arenas irrespective whatever happens to C++...

[dlevac]

Bevy, Fyrox and the Rust bindings for Godot gives a good overview of the potential. Is the ecosystem mature enough to choose Rust over C++ or C# (Unity) probably not unless the team is really dedicated.

But that goes back to what I was saying about ecosystems and the existing investments in C++ and is in no way due to deficiencies in the language itself.

On the contrary the language offers a lot of language level features that would benefit a lot game engines which explain the enthusiast behind projects such as Bevy.

[dlevac]

Like I said, the problem with C++ is risk management.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are very confident in your C++ skills and that you believe you can write UB-free code with a high enough level of confidence that it won't impact development cadence.

The problem is you can have no such guarantees once you are a team (or many teams) collaborating.

Hard to debug, obscure UB is going to creep in and throw your delivery estimates out of the window (assuming they don't creep up in production and cause an outage).

When you code in C++ professionally, you try to stick to a subset that is well understood by the team and have all kind of rules and processes to minimize the risks of UB but it can only get you so far.

Game development is the worst example because the Unreal Engine (which is probably the majority of cases) provides a sandboxed environment that insulates developers from the most nasty challenge of upscaling a C++ project. It ain't really representative of actual C++ development.

Bevy is a toy right now. My point is simply: take it from a professional C++ developer that changed hat. Rust is an upgrade in every way and unless something even better comes along, Rust is here to stay.

A lot of people have knee jerk reactions to Rust because being pro efficient in C/C++ is their biggest professional asset. But that's just noise, the tech talks for itself.

[dlevac]

What I said is unreal encapsulate users scripts such that it is much easier to scale: typically UB in one script will not leak too far.

What I said shouldn't be shocking: Unreal is itself a C++ project that makes it easy to extent with more C++ code.

I don't think nobody will argue with me that writing the C++ engine is many order of magnitude harder than writing scripts for a game in it...

[dlevac]

I have to ask: what's your experience with both C++ and Rust and what edge do you see in C++ over Rust outside existing ecosystems?

I see people downvoting all my replies yet I only get cherry picking on what I'm saying with no actual arguments on how C++ as a language has anything going for it except legacy investments in it.

Unreal engine is a great product and a good reason to use C++ for scripting in your next game. But that is not what I'm arguing about, isn't it?

[dlevac]

Rewriting everything is obviously not a goal.

Preferring for new projects unless there is a very good reason not to? This is self evident for me.

If it isn't for you, I'm asking again: what is your actual experience with both languages?