Yeah, and what's left is not much of C++. See my post about runtime recompiling for arguments to use C compiler instead of a very limited subset of C++.
(References make the type system more complex for little benefit. Templates create massive amounts of complexity and slow down my iteration loop. Already explained what's wrong with std::vector and std::unordered_map.)
- Compile times with templates are on my system under 10 seconds.
- I missed your vector and unordered_map discussion.
- "more complex" is not a useful metric to compare the language systems. Similar, I can easily say, that C pointer arithmetic is creates more complex situations when verifying that code is safe to use.
Compile times are not a problem in small codebases. Try to compile a 100kloc codebase using templates generously. Even your link times will easily grow over 10 seconds. Maybe even a minute. And 100kloc is still a pretty small codebase in terms of AAA development.
It's true that complexity somewhat depends on the context. Complexity of a language is a useful metric when talking about mental overhead of the programmer (which translates to productivity), and when writing custom tools for the language, both of which are relevant when developing a game engine. Safety has traditionally been a quite small priority in gamedev. I assumed this was the context.
So how much faster is C over C++ compilation on a AAA game codebase, can you tell me?
I, personally, cannot since I've never seen a AAA game in C. However, I've never seen a AAA game compiling under 10 seconds. Or under a minute. Just linking with a console SDK libs is about a minute if you have a fast machine.
Yes. your link times will grow. But link times are not depended on choice of language. It depends on how big your set of object files is. Depending on your platform you can optimize your build.
I.e.
- use dynamic link libraries
- use create static libraries
- carefully manage your dependencies. i.e. only include what you actually need.
- hot reload game logic (where quick iteration is more important)
There's a lot of tricks you can do to optimize build times, and I've tried most of them in my previous game engine. Got ~90kloc recompilation time from 15min to something like a few minutes, although that required rewriting a bunch of code to not use templates. And removing boost. Multiple days' work.
But the point is, that I'd like a language that is fast to compile by default. C seems pretty promising, as doing a full unity build of my 25kloc codebase takes something like 3 seconds. Not sure how much of that is actually compilation, and how much IO. I'm expecting the project to grow to something like 100-200kloc, and hopefully never have to spend time figuring out why the compilation takes too long, and instead use that time to do something productive.
- RAII you only get if you use it.
- exceptions you only get if you enable them.
- references. no overhead.
- vtables. you only get them if you need them.
- templates. no overhead runtime.
- C++ standard library. you only get it if you need it.
- what's wrong with vector ? hash map ?