Hi Chris,
Very nice post! I love seeing these kind of comparisons.
I had the same thought as Havoc's comment (not here, on your site): Why not use both languages?
Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
51–60 of 100 posts
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#52The author seems to be more interested in obsessive technical improvements than shipping a game many people want to play. One slow frame out of sixty prompts a rewrite? Product doomed. Wait until someone complains to fix anything. Something tells me that frame should not be priority one, but it is. Why?
You are completely right for things that don't involve real-time video (like games do).
A 1/60 frame skip rate sounds like nothing important, but your eye will see it easily and it's instantly annoying. It's not subtle at all, and not something you can write off. Everyone will be annoyed by it and then your product will be doomed.
(Edit) I do however agree that the frame rate is not that important. 30 fps ought to be enough for anyone. However, it has to be a really really smooth 30 fps; all the frames need to come out exactly 1/30 of a second apart. Not realizing this is where a lot of people go wrong. A smooth 30 fps looks much better than 120 fps to a human eye. A game framerate that isn't an integer divisor of your monitor's refresh rate is also a disaster (since it means the display will be skipping frames).
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#53"Why I switched from screwdrivers back to the hammer."
Because, while pounding in a few hundred nails with my trusty flathead, I noticed that it was taking really a great deal of work.
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#54The author seems to be more interested in obsessive technical improvements than shipping a game many people want to play. One slow frame out of sixty prompts a rewrite? Product doomed. Wait until someone complains to fix anything. Something tells me that frame should not be priority one, but it is. Why?
You are completely right for things that don't involve real-time video (like games do). A 1/60 frame skip rate sounds like nothing important, but your eye will see it easily and it's instantly annoying. It's not subtle at all, and not something you can write off. Everyone will be annoyed by it and then your product will be doomed. (Edit) I do however agree that the frame rate is not that important. 30 fps ought to be…
Would you rather have:
A complete game that people love, and is growing like mad, except for that damned skip at 60fps...
or
A very smooth 60fps game nobody plays.
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#55"Why I switched from screwdrivers back to the hammer." Because, while pounding in a few hundred nails with my trusty flathead, I noticed that it was taking really a great deal of work.
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Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
ObjC++ might be an even better fit
I always got a "stay on the golden path and away from ObjC++" vibe from ObjC++, kind of like trying to ask Rails to do database stuff without using ActiveRecord in 2008. You can easily write C++ code without having to bridge ObjC's object system to C++'s object-and-generics system: provide a simple C API to your C++ libraries. But the other thing is, one reason to do ObjC at all is to avoid all the heartache that com…
Obj-C++ is working well for me so far and the STL is much better than Obj-C's awkward and slow collection classes for anything that needs to run fast or that requires significant algorithmic complexity.
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#57This post should be titled, "Why I fucked up by choosing Ruby to write a game." - Or "What the fuck was I thinking" I love Ruby, I spend a lot of time writing it. I also write kids games for iOS. I would never consider Ruby(in it's current state) a good language to write a game in. Anyone who would has clearly; never written a game before; or never used Ruby for anything serious before. I agree with the other posters…
While what you say may be 100% true you might be shocked by the number of Ruby and Python devs I talk to who tell me that Ruby can do anything that C++ does if you're even a half-decent Ruby or Python dev. I've literally asked people, "What about something like Gran Turismo 7?" And I've literally been in rooms where every dev there (none game devs, all web devs) basically said if they were writing it in Ruby it could…
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Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#58This post should be titled, "Why I fucked up by choosing Ruby to write a game." - Or "What the fuck was I thinking" I love Ruby, I spend a lot of time writing it. I also write kids games for iOS. I would never consider Ruby(in it's current state) a good language to write a game in. Anyone who would has clearly; never written a game before; or never used Ruby for anything serious before. I agree with the other posters…
While what you say may be 100% true you might be shocked by the number of Ruby and Python devs I talk to who tell me that Ruby can do anything that C++ does if you're even a half-decent Ruby or Python dev. I've literally asked people, "What about something like Gran Turismo 7?" And I've literally been in rooms where every dev there (none game devs, all web devs) basically said if they were writing it in Ruby it could…
First, those are all pretty fantastic claims that need support.
Second, technically speaking of course it can do anything C++ can do. The question is can it do it well, or fast?
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#59After working 1.5 years on soft-realtime video processing systems (and game development fits this category), I feel like there's no real alternatives to C++. Because (1) when you have performance problems you can inspect the code in the disassembler and get full control of what's going on, and (2) compilers now are really smart (think msvc11 and gcc 4.6), so it just rarely make sense to sacrifice 10x speed for 3x increase in code brevity.
Of course, sometimes you have to dive even deeper, into asm or SSE intrinsics or OpenCL.
Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++
#60This post should be titled, "Why I fucked up by choosing Ruby to write a game." - Or "What the fuck was I thinking" I love Ruby, I spend a lot of time writing it. I also write kids games for iOS. I would never consider Ruby(in it's current state) a good language to write a game in. Anyone who would has clearly; never written a game before; or never used Ruby for anything serious before. I agree with the other posters…
Heh :) I'll take the bait :) I've written lots of Ruby for things that are serious (large websites with lots of traffic), and I've worked as part of a team that built on commercially available games in C++ that sold lots of copies. Ruby has come along enormously recently, especially with 1.9.3 and the other flavours that are out there now. I thought it might be worth trying it and advancing the state of the possible.…
The title of your self-submitted post is misleading. The bait post you're referring to stated the obvious, albeit in highly charged language.
It's one thing to choose the wrong language for a project. But having done that, please don't submit a post that suggests expert knowledge or deep experience in Ruby.
For what it's worth, I use both Ruby and C++. I would probably have gone with Qt if I wanted to build such a game. It would never have crossed my mind to write it in Ruby, and I don't consider myself an expert in Ruby.