I disagree with some theories/opinions in this thread:
BlitzMAX is not made to keep up with technology, it's made to make it easy to make games. (One cannot seriously think that one can compete with Java/Sun and C# M$ today with a small organisation. It's however possible to be a player on a small niche.)
Because Mark designed BlitzMAX ontop of established open source libraries from the beginning, and made it extensible we can already do lots and lots with BlitzMAX. Simons excellent MiniB3D and Bruceys all database/xml/etc. implementations and wrappers shows how much other people can add to the language externally.
I've written both Java and Python(and ofc. lots of other languages too) professionally.
I only play around with game programming as a hobby. I'll tell you why I choose BlitzMAX eventhough i know both python well and Java very well, and eventhough I've tried writing small games in both Java and Python before:
1) Integration - Getting libs/JAR's (and their JNI-attached dlls etc.) running is a pain for me. And to start any "game-ish" you might need to install a whole lot of these whereas BlitzMAX is focused on games so eighter you'll have everything you need builtin or you install 1 or 2 modules and get going fast.
Don't get me wrong: I understand JARs and JNI well and I've written several JNI solutions myself. Configuring and setting things like this up in my spare time is something i really want to avoid.
2) Distribution - Both java and python applications are a bit messy to distibute in an easy fashion due to the need to distribute the JVM/Python-engine with the product. And you usually need to write some little launcher of some kind and you need to provide paths to mentioned libs and stuff mentioned in #1 (and do it in a way that does not break existing python/java installations on your customers computer etc).
With BlitzMAX your minimum installer could be as easy as a selfextracting archive. With a little additional work one can use an installer system from SourceForge to get an nice installer that creates shortcuts on the desktop and that stuff. And no messing with setting up JVM's, CLASSPATH's, paths to DLL's and stuff.
I do understand how a professional game developing company chooses C++ for .NET etc. for a professinal game ofc, but for small scale (or hobby) development all "corner-cutting" counts :)
(excuse me for any bad grammar/spelling. I hope you get my points anyway.)
I think Mark is walking on his third leg and find it dificult to keep up with technology
BlitzMAX is not made to keep up with technology, it's made to make it easy to make games. (One cannot seriously think that one can compete with Java/Sun and C# M$ today with a small organisation. It's however possible to be a player on a small niche.)
Because Mark designed BlitzMAX ontop of established open source libraries from the beginning, and made it extensible we can already do lots and lots with BlitzMAX. Simons excellent MiniB3D and Bruceys all database/xml/etc. implementations and wrappers shows how much other people can add to the language externally.
Java has taken the place of the main education language a long time ago, and Python is about to establish itself as the first/entry level education language. [...]
I've written both Java and Python(and ofc. lots of other languages too) professionally.
I only play around with game programming as a hobby. I'll tell you why I choose BlitzMAX eventhough i know both python well and Java very well, and eventhough I've tried writing small games in both Java and Python before:
1) Integration - Getting libs/JAR's (and their JNI-attached dlls etc.) running is a pain for me. And to start any "game-ish" you might need to install a whole lot of these whereas BlitzMAX is focused on games so eighter you'll have everything you need builtin or you install 1 or 2 modules and get going fast.
Don't get me wrong: I understand JARs and JNI well and I've written several JNI solutions myself. Configuring and setting things like this up in my spare time is something i really want to avoid.
2) Distribution - Both java and python applications are a bit messy to distibute in an easy fashion due to the need to distribute the JVM/Python-engine with the product. And you usually need to write some little launcher of some kind and you need to provide paths to mentioned libs and stuff mentioned in #1 (and do it in a way that does not break existing python/java installations on your customers computer etc).
With BlitzMAX your minimum installer could be as easy as a selfextracting archive. With a little additional work one can use an installer system from SourceForge to get an nice installer that creates shortcuts on the desktop and that stuff. And no messing with setting up JVM's, CLASSPATH's, paths to DLL's and stuff.
I do understand how a professional game developing company chooses C++ for .NET etc. for a professinal game ofc, but for small scale (or hobby) development all "corner-cutting" counts :)
(excuse me for any bad grammar/spelling. I hope you get my points anyway.)