Just starting out and wondered if Python is a good choice or plain ridiculous

So... what reason is there to not keep your options open? As you've said, both available languages are quite suitable. I can't see how widespread use elsewhere and the huge number of advantages that brings even within Unity can possibly be seen as a negative.

And if you look at the sentence immediately after your quote you'll see that there's also a reason specific to this scenario that external usage could be of benefit.

 

There is imho nothing wrong with using C# outside of Unity. But imho everything wrong with choosing the language just with an eye at what you can do outside of Unity in the first place. The best tool for the best job should be the motto. And to repeat myself, you use Unity to create games. Not calculators.

 

Sure, but you've done nothing to explain either why US is a better tool for the job or why the specific point you've picked on (widespread use of a language elsewhere) is a negative, or even just not a benefit.

To me, the fact that it's widely used outside of Unity is a huge benefit for many practical, everyday reasons:
- There's a wealth of available knowledge. Books like the one I already linked are a perfect example of this, but there's also stuff like the existence of an official reference for the language and its standard library.
- There's a wealth of existing code and available libraries, both commercial and open source. I commonly use C# code that wasn't specifically written for Unity in my Unity projects, which gives you far more options than just what's available on the Asset Store.
- Loads of programmers already know C#. So if you need a hand with something, or need to hire extra people, there's a lower overhead in getting them operational. (Though for a good programmer this shouldn't be much of an issue, because they can probably make the jump with little effort either way.)

Well ok, since it's not the only reason it was suggested it's a non-issue then, right?

(For what it's worth, I'd like to repeat that the concepts and fundamental skills are more important than any particular language.)

 

I already have. For me Unity JS was easier and faster to develop with. I would have been crazy to use C# just to sacrifice the never happening case that i theoretically could have developed something outside, and could theoretically use C# then when i just would have wanted to. I picked Unity to make a game. Not to make a calculator. The best tool for the best job ...

But as told, i am gone. And use something completely different now.

It's imho a non issue to even mention it since this is the wrong approach. Again, you use Unity to make games, not calculators

Full ACK!

 

ECMA is a language that uses the skillset of programming. You cannot read MS site and the examples of C# and just take them into Unity..the structures they tend towards and what Unity does are variant and need repurposing towards Unity's component based architecture. The presence of the MS docs and VS does not change that. Hence you have to go through the Unity scripting docs just like f you studied ECMA and then went through the Unity docs.. Jeesh pal.

 

Stop being pedantic. He said he can develop faster in it as did I and Eric.

 

Yes, and you can view/edit the source code of the nodes and also write your own It's slightly easier to extend than BluePrint, in fact.

 

I still don't at all understand what you mean by "repurposing" here. Can you give an example of such "repurposing"? It reads to me like you're saying the examples from the MS reference need modification before they can be used in Unity. Is that it?

Stop being grumpy. What you've said doesn't even address half of the question I asked: why should C#'s widespread use should be discounted as a benefit? Unless I've missed something the only answer given for that so far is something about... not building calculators..?

 

Repurposing means exactly what it means. MS gives fine examples for class based windows forms and server code. Rarely can you take an example from there and cut and paste it. It has to be repurposed..meaning look at it and what it does and then figure out how to use that to implement into your game/app framework in a component based structure.,.and as Eric pointed out..it's syntax is backwards like talking like Yoda. I like my colons and semi colons. Makes it really easy to see structure at a glance.

UnityScript is similar to ActionScript, JavaScript, ECMA scripting and having a look at Swift I can use the same sort of paradigm there.. meaning I can keep 90% of my muscle memory when writing. I don't fiddle f((( aroiund as a hobby. I work for fixed price contracts and every minute doing something I don't have to costs me in dollar per hour ratio to final pay. I can write the outline for a function or for loop in literally 3 seconds and then fill it in. I had no issues understanding the vars and functions structure the first night opening Unity and had been doing component based architectures in Flash for years. On OSX there is nothing i can do with C# . it is useless to me outside knowing it for Unity. So tout it all you want. It doesn't do anything useful for me at all beyond Unity. I never intend on owning a Windows platform nor doing corporate code. I am an artist and tech head on OSX. So give me a good reason why I should use C#???

 

Please re-read what I've written. I made it pretty darn clear, and specifically repeated the point, that the language itself doesn't matter if you know the fundamentals.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to change languages. The last several posts are nothing more or less than discussion about why someone is urging others to disregard one potential benefit of one language. Clearly it's a tangent I shouldn't have followed.

Reference guides aren't there so you can copy-paste the code. They're there so you can see how something works in order to put it to your own use. That's not "re-purposing".

 

Well of course they need to learn about programming. Jeesh. How does using UnityScript not do that compared to C#?? It has been suggested throughout this thread by C#er's that UnityScript is not a language with any use outside Unity. The calm mr Hippocoder nearly spews spittle in vehement rage over his monitor at the mere mention of it.. Why? Understanding how it is structured gives one a leg up in understanding the other languages I referred to and they can as well be used for employment. Not everybody is interested in server and corporate forms coding or is on windows. OS X folks have no use for it on their platform. I was glad to find mono to know that if I ever had to I could code in C# but that need has not arisen outside of some freelance in Unity where I had to use C# for the contract work. Some folks use JS and AS and many use Swift and give it great accolades. ECMA scripting is an ISO standard AFAIK. They are related as Java and C# are related. Eric is smart enough to just pipe up once as he knows what goes on around here and Tiles is about fed up with it. I am too and I am just in a mood this week so i am not ignoring the blatant BS.. Not from you so I make that clear.. You just happened to step into the barrage of truthbombing I was engaged in..

 

Hahaha, I couldn't help but notice.

It is indeed a standard, but UnityScript is not ECMA script. Otherwise the whole thing about widespread use wouldn't be a difference between them.

And the process of doing that is what this tangent is all about. UnityScript as a language is fine for that, this all got stirred up by my asking if there's a good foundation book that uses it.

 

I just wanted to cut in and first of all say there are many paths up the mountain, which all eventually lead to one peak.

Also, Alesmith Speedway Stout is f-ing delicious.

That is all.

 

All of the first Unity books were written in Unity JS, and gave a good fundament here. It took up to Unity 4 until the first Unity book with using C# arrived when i remember right. And before Unity 4 the learning section tutorials contained all material in Unity js. Funny how fast this is forgotten ...

 

That's why I started in Unity with UnityScript. Everything back then (2009) was pushing it. Over the past couple of years it's gone more and more towards C# so I finally bit the bullet and learned it. Now I love it but I totally understand why some people still would like to stick with UnityScript.

 

This is probably at the heart of why so many users prefer C# now. Unity's user base is expanding dramatically. I'm willing to bet more then half of Unity users started since 4 came out. Maybe even more.

Many of these new users have their first real experiance programming with Unity. Without a lot of experiance it's difficult to figure out UnityScript. The first thing you do is google JavaScript tutorials. You catch a whole ton of absolutely useless ECMA junk. You throw it into your scripts and it does not work at all.

So you go over to answers or the forums. Every user answering your post says something along the lines of "My UnityScript is not strong, but I think this is what you are trying to do". Several post about C#.

You persist until you get the 'xxx is not a member of UnityEngine.object'. As a good student you google the error. You discover that this particular error is very common to UnityScript and doesn't plauge C#.

If you survive that the next hurdle is when you download an asset or Wiki script in C# in discover the nightmare of meaningful communication between languages. You are left with the choice of converting complex code you barely understand to UnityScript. Or converting your own stuff to C#.

The point is that without the resources to get beginners started in a language UnityScript is going to slowly dwindle. It's already below the critical mass required to be self sustaining. Most of the questions in the scripting forum on UnityScript don't get responded to by experienced users of the language.

The advantages of a less verbose syntax and faster coding time are valid. As is it's similarity to other languages. But these don't mean much when you are starting out.

 

I hope you don't mind when i disagree

I tested both when i was a beginner, and i started with Unity JS because it was by classes easier to learn and to understand for me. It was not so much about the learning material, but JS was simply easier to understand and to use for me.

It's definitely more difficult to learn C#. Even more when you use Google. Google leads you in the total wrong directions here. And you end in learning C# things that you never ever need in Unity. MSDN does not contain move or simple move. And the Unity api does not contain quite a ton of C# stuff for good reason.

Doesn't mean that you cannot use those C# things* in Unity, but that you usually never ever need those things for your Pong. Unity is a game making tool by design. With its own API. It is not a C# ide.

* Which is quite transferable to JS because both is Mono. Needs a bit tinkering though since it is undocumented.

I think we have been at this point before. The Unity API is the place to look for the Unity API. Not Google

Do you really wonder when nearly every JS thread gets hijacked by the C# folks? When every versus discussion ends in one or two guys telling you that you can use both, that both languages are fine. That it is mainly a thing of personal preferences since you can do the very same game in the roughly same amount of time? That you cannot say afterwards what game is made with what? But a whole horde of C# folks then enters the thread and explains in detail why JS just has to suck? And that you can't even move a cube with JS? ( Yes, i am exaggerating here )

You are not longer welcome here as a JS user. That's the real problem. Not the myth about lack of resouces. I definitely have no time to battle with C# folks all the time when i have a JS question or want to help a JS user. I have done this one time too often now.

The resources are still there. The books written with Unity 4 and JS still exists. The Unity API still contains all code snippets in JS. And while the learning section shows the videos for C# only nowadays, the code snippets from the learning videos are also available in JS. As told, the lack of resources is a myth. One of those many for me crazy Pro C# arguments that has no base.

 

That "good reason" is that the Unity Scripting Reference is a reference for Unity, not for .NET. It has nothing to do with avoiding anything about the language.

No, because those things are Unity specific. It's the same reason that my screwdriver kit doesn't come with instructions for repairing my washing machine: even if it wanted to, it couldn't, because the people who made the former don't know about the latter.

It's a feedback loop. More people get into C#, so more people advocate it, which persuades more people to use it in future, who then go on to advocate for it...

Wait... where has anyone said anything about US sucking? (I haven't read the whole thread. Did that actually happen?)

Edit: I originally had the wrong language in that last bit. Oops.

 

There is this small difference between advocating and the other thingie with telling untrue things, the try to make the whole language deprecated, hijacking threads and stuff ...

Well. You are of course right. Nobody did SAY that. I even mentioned that i am exaggerating here. But when you look at this thread then you can see again a clear tendency to make C# big and to make Unity JS small

 

I was just going through some really old files and pulled up a resume from around 1997. In the software skills section I had listed a few gems: Ray Dream Designer, Deluxe Paint, Alias Wavefront (SGI), etc. All excellent tools in their time but every one of them a dusty memory today. Since then I've learned and become proficient with even more development tools, game engines, and programming languages than I can even count. The list of old, outdated tech keeps growing, and it always will.

Game development by its very nature requires change. It requires a constant search for new knowledge and new techniques. It is a forward moving goal. Always. Since the beginning. The tools are just tools, and the tools change. All the time. It is useless to stubbornly cling to any one tool and say "no, I refuse to learn this new thing, because I like the old thing." That does not work in game development. It never has and it never will.

Reminisce about the good times you had with a tool. Express disappointment in its demise, and move on. There's no other way, unless you want to be left behind. Screaming at a train won't stop it. Get on board and enjoy the ride.

 

Indeed. And i did move on

 

To what? And if so, what are we talking about here?

 

To another language. I am toying around with Python, and am at learning C at the moment. My next project is not a game. The game market is imho dead at the moment. Too much people are trying to develop games nowadays. Which makes it hard to motivate myself to produce yet another game that nobody plays then ^^

 

You're totally allowed to disagree. You have a relatively unique way of looking at things that can be refreshing.

You know if you really wanted to change the attitude of people towards UnityScript the best way would be to jump on scripting and answers and start posting useful stuff in UnityScript. As of today there are only a couple of active users that have anything more then a basic understanding of the language.

Its probably more effective then jumping on every thread that compares the two languages and decrying the C# fanboys.

 

Vice versa on the last sentence. On the help.. I have piped in with help and JS code and got big thanks for giving them JS code. I would do it more but frankly my development cycles leave me exhausted.

 

Deprecated programs are one thing. Having a codebase of frameworks of several thousand scripts in JS in a non deprecated application is another ballgame altogether. Like I should just rebuild those from scratch when they save me hours and days on some freelance is just killing my financial vibe and setups I have been putting together over six years. Fortunately 20% of millions of devs is ALOT of people that will be quite pissed if the C# fanbois get their wish.

 

Or Fortran!

 

I did help. Unity QA is not the only place to help people, you know. But i have left Unity for now. My focus is at other things now. And the day has just 24 hours, unfortunately ...

Regarding just a handful of users, do you really think that the millions of folks that started in Unity with JS are all dead now?

20% usership is definitely not just a couple of active users. Here we are at the myths again. And it was 50% not long ago. The c# fanboyism was and is imho a big factor in the decrease of the userbase. And so i find it still important to point at it. I found it super disturbing when i answered a Unity JS question, and the next answer was "Use C#" then. And here you have the reason number one why people refuses to answer Unity JS questions these days. Not the lack of knowledge.

The other factor is that Unity officially favours C# nowadays. Which is fine. But there are still no official plans to deprecate Unity js as they did with BOO. So it is also fine to use Unity JS.

 

Yes.

 

Obvious follow-up question: did you kill them?

--Eric

 

Use CSharpatron and convert them. That's what I did.

Raging at the machine doesn’t stop it from moving.

EDIT: And look, I understand having a huge application with a ton of scripts that you don't want to change to a different language. I maintain one of those myself. An old game I built, hugely complex. I sold it to a client two years ago, and I still work on it for him, and it's written in UnityScript, in... Unity 3. He doesn't want to do an upgrade to a newer version just yet, so I work on the old one, in Unity 3. And it's a pain, so yeah, I get it.

But I wonder... having an application with thousands of lines of scripting, in UnityScript... surely by now you have a really strong grasp on what you can and can't do in UnityScript, and how to do what needs to be done. Is this really a case of having trouble finding answers to UnityScript problems or is it more a case of arguing for arguing's sake? I go back and forth all the time between my new games written in C# and that old one written in UnityScript, and I really don't run into the kinds of problems that are being brought up here. It's jut not that big of an issue.

 

Don't fix what ain't broken

 

Okie doke. I guess I don't understand the resistance against learning new things. Suit yourself.

 

That's just it. You have a huge collection of scripts to assist you in development. Someone just starting won't and they need learning resources. If there were up-to-date learning resources (books, tutorials, etc) for UnityScript then I wouldn't be as quick to recommend C#, but the reality is that the learning resources are now centered around C#.

 

It's not the resistance against learning that has lead to my comment. It's the resistance against fixing what ain't broken. Just because it is Unity JS does not mean that you have to fix it. It is not broken. It works just fine.

As told, the tutorials and books are still there. Code learned and written in and with Unity 4 is not outdated. It's not that everything has changed with Unity 5.

 

If the changes are minor then the authors should be able to quickly update their books (ie a second edition).

 

No one has said anything about "fixing" anything. The language of choice for Unity has gradually changed into something different than it started with. It happens. I learned what I needed to know about C# in a few days, coming from years using UnityScript, and moved on. It's not that big of a deal.

 

I think what some might be missing here is that just because I might advocate for getting rid of JS, it's not a personal thing. I write code for a living. I think the languages we use and make popular matter, because when we take something mediocre and make it popular we are then stuck with it for the next 20 years. And all too often we then build on top of those bad choices making it even worse.

JS is very arguably one of the worst languages that we made popular. I'm not saying it's a bad language, but it's not a particularly good one and in the browser we are now stuck with it. Just look at all of the workarounds we have to do to make JS kind of support namespacing and classes in an elegant fashion. Or the various projects that attempt to make it more acceptable such as coffeescript. We don't do that because it's a good language.

I would argue that keeping and fully supporting a dynamic language would be good. I just don't think JS is a good choice, but I don't think C# as the sole language is a good choice either. I think if Unity decides to pick just one, then yes C# is the better choice big picture. But again I don't think that's really the best approach.

When it comes to Boo, well they just messed up on that royally. First, languages designed for specific products have a long history of not gaining acceptance. Second, if you create a language it really needs to add value to the languages before it, provide some real benefit. Boo failed on that. There are no compelling reasons to use Boo over python or ruby, especially given the huge libraries those other languages bring with them.

Which is unfortunate because I think either ruby or python would make excellent languages in Unity alongside C#. Either of those are very productive languages. They are dynamic yet strongly typed, and don't have the limitations of JS. But what we have now is a choice between C#, a decent although less expressive language, and JS, an inherently limited language that most of us can't use on a lot of projects because of it's limitations and limited libraries within certain contexts.

So basically I don't think JS vs C# is interesting. I think JS vs what we could have had is what's interesting, and I think that could still change. I'm hoping it might yet change. Unity would benefit IMO from cleaning up it's language mess, and to do that well it needs to drop JS and bring in something that is acceptable to the mass of JS developers and also usable for the rest of us.

 

Correction I was thinking boo was dynamically type. Still same basic argument though.

 

JS has a place on the web where it isn't called mean names. It doesn't need to wear the unityscript mask to pretend it fits into the gamedev world.

 

Every time I've seen you post this, it's been a few days old and I feel like it's too late to chime in with a 'me too'. But, me too. It has some things that annoy me, such as the fact that it insists on correcting my formatting in horrible ways. Like putting a space between an array name and its index. But other than that, it doesn't bother me any more than any other IDE does. The autocomplete is nice enough when it works with you, but gets in the way when it doesn't, just like all IDEs.

Like some of the other old heads around here, I preferred to do all of my coding in a plain text editor, or an editor with syntax highlighting like TextWrangler until 2009 when I had to use XCode for iOS development. I've since grown to appreciate some of the things that full IDEs do enough that I now prefer to use them. But I won't be fully pleased with them until they develop mind reading technology and stop popping up autocomplete dialogs that interrupt my workflow when I do not wish to autocomplete something. It's especially bad when you arrow key up to edit something and want to quickly arrow key back down, but the autocomplete pops up and your arrow down key scrolls through a list of options you couldn't care two flips about.

Maybe the fact that I'm a plain text editor kinda guy with a slight appreciation for IDEs is why it doesn't bother me that Monodevelop doesn't have all the whiz bang features that people prefer Visual Studio for. I did download VS for working with Unreal though. Maybe I'll give it a try for a Unity project one of these days.

 

I installed VS the other day and got it all set up for Unity, and right away noticed it was much slower than I'd like. Opening up the project solution took a long time. Opening a script took a long time. I gave it my best shot. It didn't impress. So I went back to Notepad++, set up a few things to make it more like VS (like giving autocomplete a try), and was back in business. It's fast as hell, it has great syntax highlighting, and it does what I want.

 

Starting Visual Studio has definitely gotten slower over the years, but actually loading a script once it is open is only slow for the very first script. Subsequent scripts for that project open very quickly for me.

 

I haven't even opened Visual Studio yet. Since I'm really leaning on sticking with Unity for this project, I probably won't open it anytime soon. Monodevelop does what I need. I've never used Notepad++ since this is my first Windows machine since Windows 95 came out. I may give that a try one day too, but I'm really not very picky about what I type code into.

 

I too wish some of the default formatting things like that were... easier to change. I went through template settings in preferences and couldn't figure it out.

I think I used visual studio 2008 for a school project. Seemed to have a million features. I wanted to use about 3 of them.

 

First time it runs it'll do some additional work, so if you're planning on being away from the computer for a few minutes it wouldn't hurt to start it up even if you plan to close it immediately.

Which edition?

 

I did the same thing. Went through all the trouble of setting up the formatting the way and wanted, and Monodevelop seemed to just ignore it. Seriously though, who puts a space between the array name and the bracket for its index? Is that a thing that people do? It just doesn't make sense in my head. Array[5] is a single element. There's no need for a space in there as though Array and [5] are separate entities. It puts spaces in other strange places too, but that is the only one that gives me conniption fits.

I'll keep that in mind. My previous prediction that my old iMac would be my primary computer because I prefer desktops and I prefer OSX hasn't really proven to be true. The thing is just so old and slow that it annoys me now more than ever. Plus I kinda enjoy being in my living room once in a while instead of being trapped in my bedroom all the time. Previously, I ate, slept, worked, and leisured in there. I only came out to cook and drink coffee. I kinda like enjoying other areas of the house for a change. So I'm not away from this computer very often. But I guess I can open it tonight before Zoo comes on and close it when it goes off.

 

Yeah after it loaded up and the first script came in then it wasn't too big of deal, but still I don't like anything that slows me down for no real reason. Notepad++ takes about ten seconds to load up with about 60 scripts on the sidebar, ready to be edited. I don't know enough about VS to justify using it over Notepad++ so unless it can do something really special (that I'll actually use) then there's no comparison.

 

You have to change the settings from a different location. It's been a while since I used MonoDevelop so I don't remember the exact way to do it. I feel like it is one of these.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...default-code-formatting-policy-in-monodevelop
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/611679/indentation-formatting-issue-in-monodevelop-unity.html

 

I get that..but I am not taking about a single game here.. I am talking dozens of frameworks. I haven't had a moment to spare for anything in two months..My food is burning right now! LOL..even for eating properly.