[gameprogrammer] Re: Java Game Programming ok?

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 09:12:01 -0500, "Bob Pendleton" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:
> Java got a bad reputation with game programmers when it first came out.
> Pretty much all of the problems it had have been fixed or no longer
> matter.

Java 5 (which has just been released) looks like it will fix, or at
least hide, some of the most annoying bits of Java. 
(http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/releases/j2se15/)  Note
that Java 5 is basically just version 1.5 of the SDK or JDK or whatever
they want to call it.

The big one is that the language now has generic types, like templates
in C++.  Where previously you had to specifically cast the data coming
out of a (say) Vector, because it was all an Object, now you can
actually have some measure of compile-time type safety.  I'm very happy
with this.

Autoboxing of primitive types is the other big one, for me.  It
basically means that there's automatic conversions from Integer to int,
Double to double, etc.  It doesn't take away the inefficiency of having
to allocate space for an object when you just want to store an int,
however.  So that's good but not great, especially for games where
efficiency is key.

And there's some other useful stuff like enhanced for loops (that's "for
(Iterator i : list) ...") and proper enumerated types (another
abomination in Java has been the proliferation of public static final
ints for class constants, so that's good).

The big question, from a game programming perspective, is whether it
will be quick enough.  I'm willing to bet it will, although not with
Java3D which I've used a little bit and found quite mediocre.  I reckon
the increased ease of programming and maintenance makes up for any loss
of efficiency.  But we'll see.

Dave.
-- 
  Dave Slutzkin
  Melbourne, Australia
  daveslutzkin@xxxxxxxxxxx



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