C syntax more or less compiles in other languages, thats anoter pro for C, even in this regard, its better skill to have than c++.

JoeJ said:
Which game is still written in C nowadays? Which serious engine is not written in C++?

my games and game engines are written in c.

who decides what is serious and not? can you show me a game made in unity which is not yandere simulator, and has more players than 5 without googling for 10 minutes? :D

Geri said:
who decides what is serious and not?

I would say a serious game engine is an engine which can implement any genre of current video games, and also found some use in the industry to proof that.

Agree about learning C first is a good idea. I did, and after that i can start with any widespread language by treating it like C (or often also C++). It works. But this wasn't a beginners question.
For true beginners however, that's maybe some misleading claims of yours, and you surely expected some questioning to follow… ; )

JoeJ said:
I would say a serious game engine is an engine which can implement any genre of current video games, and also found some use in the industry to proof that.

I consider those more like rendering or 3d engines rather than game engines, or more like a game frameworks. I think a serious engine is more or less a fixed-type solution, which makes it possible to do one type of game. This would be fine for a beginner (for example to make an rts with an rts engine). Once he grows out that engine, i think he should build his own code from bottom to top. And languages like c and javascript are a very good path.

The biggest problem with c++/c#/java is that then he limits himself to jobs where he ends up at some company doing some aabb collision engine from 5000 lines because its masked under decades of classes and objects, and no one knows how it works, why it works, why its 5000 lines instead of 50 line, looking forward for a miserable career, and getting jeeted from his position after the company licenses a collision engine, desperately trying to find another company, where he ends up maintaining the font engine for a gui interface, which relies on its own library written 10 years ago, which crashes after rendering the 2000th font, and he gets tasked to fix it, but no one knows what is wrong with it, because it uses high level language features combined with 20 year old opensource libraries eating up 2 mbyte of binary space where the creator died 10 years ago and his last commit was ,,obsolete, please do not use it'', but you are not allowed to rewrite it, or change it to normal code, because the game will call that library at 800 different locations in the code. Before you think i am over-exaggerating, these are real world examples from my circles :P No wonder there are so many job offers for positions like this - as they never find the ideal programmer for the task.

Geri said:
Before you think i am over-exaggerating

Haha, don't worry. I don't. :D

I'm not going to go back and forth here, but I'm just here to spread info for people that actually seek help.

“instead of wasting time on c++”

To the OP. Please waste your time on C++. C is useless. Nobody uses it and you have to do stupid things like re-write virtual function calls or make everything global and pass in pointers. Everyone I went to college with at Digipen learned C++. They still teach it. For 20 years they all place jobs everywhere in games at a massive rate. Every job I worked has been C++. Every high paying job is c++ that I see.

“The biggest problem with c++/c#/java is that then he limits himself to jobs”
I get asked on LinkedIn every single day for at minimum 1 job, up to 3. Every day. C++ $200,000/year. Unreal/Unity/Bungie/Sony. You are giving bad advice for someone that wants to be accepted in the videogame world. Every job in games can use someone with expertise on C++. Not every game job cares about C#.

“own library written 10 years ago, which crashes after rendering the 2000th font, and he gets tasked to fix it, but no one knows what is wrong with it, because it uses high level language features combined with 20 year old opensource libraries eating up 2 mbyte of binary space where the creator died 10 years ago and his last commit was”

because it uses high level language features → High level features help debug it. Have you ever worked at a game company? It's not assembly language, its meant to be read high level. Literally this statement invalidates any advice you have. I ported Madden on to a new platform at the time called Wii-U. There is no “easy” button to do that, yes we had crashes all over the place. We fixed them by using a debugger. Crashes in fonts, rendering, everything.

And what do you think happens when Unreal Engine has 1000 programmers per year commit to it and when you pay them for 3rd party help and don't get any, because of the new feature in your game that has extended the c++ code to perform a unique task. You MUST learn C++ to be taken serious on any AAA game title period. They aren't going to hire you with 10 years experience only playing around with Java and not being able to answer questions about C++ and write programming tests in C++.

Maybe your unreal engine 1000 programmers pinball painting renderings (which looks like its written for an s3 virge in visual basic for windows 95 - and this is not an insult, it literally reminds me that) pulls you 200.000$ per year c++ offers on linkedin only because you are accidentally got the price tag in iranian rial and not usa dollars.

Please tell me about this mistery: how comes, when i meet one of these javac++mastermodernunitymilliondollargpgpu guys in person, it always turns out they can barely afford food? (Nothing personal, i am not saying you are like this.) Before i could ask these sensitive questions, they always start to loudly evangelize their fantastic technologies and solutions, trying to explain what i should do so maybe i could join in their holy cycles in day to share their inability to buy food.

Geri said:
Please tell me about this mistery: how comes, when i meet one of these javac++mastermodernunitymilliondollargpgpu guys in person, it always turns out they can barely afford food? (Nothing personal, i am not saying you are like this.) Before i could ask these sensitive questions, they always start to loudly evangelize their fantastic technologies and solutions, trying to explain what i should do so maybe i could join in their holy cycles in day to share their inability to buy food.

I see two options:
They buy 4090 snake oil to make their brute force crap finally barely work also at home.
Or, just one out of 1000 gets the $200k per year, while the rest only gets the bare minimum they have to pay.

I guess it's the latter, but i'm an industry outsider, remaining curious for better answers as well…