- 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 ?
(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.)
- 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.
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.
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)
- compile cache.
- ssd disk
- fast processor
- and yes, agreed. 100kloc is still small.
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.
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.