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There are a variety of reasons why game programmers choose Cþþ. Here are a few:
n It’s fast. Well-written Cþþ programs can be blazingly fast. One of Cþþ’s design goals is performance. And if you need to squeeze out even more performance from your programs, Cþþ allows you to use assembly language—the lowest-level, human-readable programming language—to communicate directly with the computer’s hardware.
n It’s flexible. Cþþ is a multi-paradigm language that supports different styles of programming, including object-oriented programming. Unlike some other modern languages, though, Cþþ doesn’t force one particular style on a programmer.
n It’s well-supported. Because of its long history in the game industry, there’s a large pool of assets available to the Cþþ game programmer, including graphics APIs and 2D, 3D, physics, and sound engines. All of this pre-exiting code can be leveraged by a Cþþ programmer to greatly speed up the process of writing a new game.