Al's Game Programming Blog

The more I think about it, the more I think the time is right to start using higher-level languages for games. As an industry, we predominantly use C/C++ as our primary programming language. It is also common to see a scripting languages, such as Lua, used as a mechanism to allow technical designers to customize the behavior of game objects. But these are, on the whole, treated as second class languages.

There are of course some exceptions. For example, Humongous Entertainment embedded Python in their game engine and claimed that it made their programmers more productive. Jak and Daxter II was implemented in Lisp. But they had to stop using it when the programmer who understood their Lisp compiler moved on to other things.

So I think there is potentially a lot to be gained by leveraging a higher-level language. But of course there are also some pretty scary pitfalls. I want to better understand the potential benefits and the pitfalls.