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Evaluating Java for Game Development

Posted by michael on from the gotta-be-useful-for-something dept.

Jacob Marner writes: "A large independent university report has just been published that examines whether Java is useful for professional game development."

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Conclusions... by Unruly · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In contrary to popular belief, Java applications are in fact not much slower than C++ applications when they have been tuned for performance. A rough estimate based on the various benchmarks would say that tweaked Java code is a little slower than C++; typically 20-50% on the average, but this is hard to tell for certain because of the large variations in the speed seen in the benchmarks....

    20-50% is "not much slower" ??

    Say I had two programs, one done in all C++ and one done in all Java

    Now, if these numbers are right, then the C++ program is up to TWICE as fast as the Java one... I think I know which one I'll be using.

    --
    Pokey The Penguin!
    1. Re:Conclusions... by Zach+Garner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Say I had two programs...

      But you don't! Instead, you either have a Java one or a C++ one. You don't get to chose. It's the people developing the games that make the choice.

      Two more conclusions from the article:
      1. The slowdown is less [than 20%] in 3D applications.
      2. There is a 65% increase in productivity.

      In addition, this paper makes a note that Java is useful for games that are not tied to performance and for low profile games.

      For these games, the decrease in speed is not important, but the amount of money spent on the project is.

      We've long since passed the point where programmer time is cheaper than hardware time.