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Which in your opinion is the programming language of choice for game development?

Any special mention for .NET developers?

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closed as not constructive by The Communist Duck, Tetrad♦ Jun 2 '11 at 18:00

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
    
Which platform? –  Maik Semder Jun 2 '11 at 7:23
    
This is subjective, argumentative, and too broad. -1 and vote to close. If you want to know as a general whole, try gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/339/… –  The Communist Duck Jun 2 '11 at 8:33

3 Answers 3

up vote 2 down vote accepted

It really doesn't matter, if you're trying to choose a language. Anything with graphical bindings can work - so close to anything. Early console games were hand-coded in Assembler, for instance.

Nowadays, the industry mostly uses C++. Some indie devs use C# (Terraria and Xbox Live Community Games for instance) and the XNA framework.

If it's .NET you want, I believe you can use C# or F# (or another .NET language, minus IronPython) with either Microsoft's XNA framework or with SlimDX. Again, since you seem to be of the opinion that you need the best language to use, I'm assuming you're going to find C# more comfortable..unless you know FP.

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What about the disadvantage of vendor lock-in? Wouldn't it be better to use something more generic that can more easily be compiled to run natively on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix, and other Operating Systems? C++ or even C might be good choices, and then there's also Java which is compile-one-run-anywhere and is the language of choice for Google's Android. –  Randolf Richardson Jun 3 '11 at 1:00
1  
Depends. The guy claims to be (or I assume he is) a .NET developer, and a lot of games do fine without platform compat. –  The Communist Duck Jun 3 '11 at 14:34
    
Indeed they do, but I still think cross-platform compatible gaming is something that should be strongly encouraged because Operating Systems change over time (e.g., just look at all the trouble people had running games designed for Windows 98 under Windows XP at first, then there was the dreadful Windows Vista, and now we're seeing 16-bit games not working in 64-bit Windows 7). With "cross-platform development" in mind, this can still make it easier for developers to upgrade their games for compatibility with newer versions of the OS they got locked into. –  Randolf Richardson Jun 3 '11 at 18:50
up vote 2 down vote

It depends on your platform of choice, but C++ is fairly standard in industry with occasional other languages on top.

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up vote 2 down vote

For .Net developers - I think you should try C# and XNA - it's based on .Net Framework. It's primarly for XBox, but you can develop also for Windows Phone 7 and of course Windows.

It's really easy and it gives you a lot of usable functions.

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