Now, may I humbly suggest, that maybe, just maybe, we can do a lot better then C++ in terms of creation efficiency even without managed code? And as programs grow ever more complicated, the amount of development time required for them is only going to increase, thus making development efficient is a pretty big priority, and maybe it's time to retire the old girl? She's what, 30, 40 years old now, and she was a bunch of extra additional to a language already designed for procedural programming?
If D had a good IDE, I'd use it. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Its also not well-supported, which introduces heaps of problems. There's a really awesome game written in D using OpenGL somewhere called like... tube racer or something like that.
TorusTrooper, thats what it was! The game is lightweight, unmanaged, and as totally kickass as C++, but sadly, D is young, and being 30 to 40 years old is more of an advantage to C++ then a disadvantage.
Also, C++ as a language works so well because it mimics how computers operate on a fundamental level. If we change how computers operate on a fundamental level, maybe then we'll need a new langauge for them. Until then, C++ still reigns supreme, and D is close behind, but D has issues of its own. Its these massive amounts of issues that keep new unmanaged languages from being developed. No huge company is going to put their money behind an unmanaged language, its all about managed stuff now, so its inevitable that C++ is probably going to still be here 30 to 40 years in the future. We still use roads, don't we?
COULD we do better than C++? Yeah, D is proof of that. Is that going to change anything? No, D is also proof of that. Everyone was like HOLY CRAP D IS AWESOME!
.... and then nothing happened.
I'm saying that next-gen games are always,
always going to need the speed, power, and precise control that C++ offers, to such a degree that it will outweigh most advantages of managed code. Now, the higher-levels of games are moving to managed code for these precise reasons, things like scripting and whatnot, but at the end of the day, the game still needs to be coded primarily in C++, because thats the only way you can get peoples' jaws to drop at a conference room meeting.
I personally think this is just one of those things where no matter how much it sucks, its going to stay around until I'm so old I can't get out of my chair. However I also don't think that C++ is a bad language either, and I disagree that it is a horrifyingly mean and nasty language to program in. I think that it can be a b!tch to
learn, but once you get the hang of it, its just another programming language. I transfer from C# to C++ every day with no problem.
Either way, I'm going to go play TorusTrooper and then use my handy dandy C++ skills to help improve Freespace 2.