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Your #programming Favourites

Started by shurcool May 1, 2012 at 7:53 PM 11 replies 2.6k views
Original Post
shurcool
shurcool
These can be anything: libraries, technologies, concepts, languages. By "favourites" I mean it's anything that you really like (not necessarily use), want to see flourish and continue to be supported. If these things were to go away, you'd be very upset.

Here are mine:


  • OpenGL
  • GLFW library - This one is really underrated IMO, it kills me to see people still use glut when GLFW is such a better alternative.

    • OpenRL - I'm really happy it exists and I hope it doesn't die anytime soon, even if it's not ready for prime time yet. The heterogeneous approach is excellent imo.

      • WM_POINTER* messages - I really like what they're doing with the new unified input stack library in Windows 8. It allows developers to treat touch, mouse and styluses as generic "pointer" devices.

        • C++11


          (I'm sure I'm leaving out many, but these are my top favs off the top of my head)

          What are yours? Feel free to repeat what others have mentioned if it's your favourite too.
NetGnome
NetGnome
MonoGame is piquing my interest lately as a way to allow XNA apps to be cross-platform. Bastion is one such game that took advantage of it for Mac and Chrome.
FLeBlanc
FLeBlanc
Lua
Recast and Detour
SFML

I found this thingy that someone here on the forums (AgentC) is working on, called Urho3D. I have only tinkered with it, dabbled really, but I would like to see it continue and grow.
BeanDog
BeanDog
Scala - Ever since I built my first Scala project, every time I work in another language I wish it were Scala. Static (but aggressively inferred) typing, first-class functions and closures, easy currying, terse syntax. Performance is even quite good (on well-designed programs), since it runs on the JVM rather than some homegrown runtime. Plus that means easy compatibility with any Java library.
shurcool
shurcool
Adding to my list of favourites:


  • AGG (Anti-Grain Geometry)
  • glAArg
  • GPC (General Polygon Clipper)
  • Wild Magic (by www.geometrictools.com)
Serapth
Serapth

dart
It has what you need from javascript with classes, interfaces, and variable types.


I looked into dart shortly after it was announced, and the project was in a sorry state. It didn't compile for windows, the documentation was missing or bad, most links 404ed, etc...

In other words, a pretty typical google developer project...

Has the organization improved since, or is it yet another half supported Google release?
AgentC
AgentC
Thanks FLeBlanc for the encouraging comment regarding Urho3D smile.png

For me,
STB libraries, including minimal image loader, ogg/vorbis decoder, and truetype font rendering
SDL and GLFW, it's sometimes hard to decide between the two - SDL has sound support and more supported platforms, while GLFW is compact and minimally obtrusive
Recast & Detour as well, I hope to get to using this some day, but have had no time yet
AngelScript, very convenient scripting integration with C++

I'm also following other newer, less known open source game engines such as LightFeather, SoftPixel, PixelLight and hmrEngine.
_the_phantom_
_the_phantom_
C# and the .Net runtime.

Most of the last two months I've been hip deep in it at work for the first time since version 2.0 and as much as I love my normal C++ graphics programming frankly programming with C#4 has been the most fun I've had in a while.

TPL is just so easy to use, finally got a handle on LINQ and bam! my coding style has changed and things just got easy... and once I get a chance to burn some time on Rx I'm sure it'll get even more awesome. (and thats before even touching the DLR! and C# 5 just around the corner too...)

Sure it's not perfect but right now if you told me going forward I could only use C# and .Net I'd be pretty ok with it it
ChaosEngine
ChaosEngine

C# and the .Net runtime.

Most of the last two months I've been hip deep in it at work for the first time since version 2.0 and as much as I love my normal C++ graphics programming frankly programming with C#4 has been the most fun I've had in a while.

TPL is just so easy to use, finally got a handle on LINQ and bam! my coding style has changed and things just got easy... and once I get a chance to burn some time on Rx I'm sure it'll get even more awesome. (and thats before even touching the DLR! and C# 5 just around the corner too...)

Sure it's not perfect but right now if you told me going forward I could only use C# and .Net I'd be pretty ok with it it biggrin.png


Amen brother. I think I'd stab myself in the spleen if I had to go back to C++ now.
Multiple dispatch with the DLR is just so damn awesome.
if you think programming is like sex, you probably haven't done much of either.-------------- - capn_midnight

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