Hello there !
I want to code a little incremental game just for me and some friends, and i started prototyping this in Go (because i know how to use it) but i was thinking that maybe run it in a browser and then use typescript would be better
I have no experience in making games and in javascript, i mostly code for backend and math stuff (my favorite gui is a terminal), and when i need a real gui i use pure html page edited by backend
So i was wondering what would be easier between learning making game in Go, or learning JS/TS for an incremental game (pictures and numbers and text, maybe little animations), and if javascript is still relevant to learn
Thanks !
(Also im a student, so my knowledge of the professional dev world is quite limited, forgive my approximative wording :b)
JS is rightly criticized as a language, for lending itself to… less than ideal practices. Which is largely a result of it NOT being designed as a programming language. It was designed as a dead-simple scripting language for getting the most minimal of bells-and-whistles kinda things in the browser. So, it’s worth noting that you might have to un-learn some bad habits someday, as you progress to other languages, or even just higher-level stuff in JS.
However, it’s still an excellent choice as a starter language, on account of how dead-simple it was designed to be. And how dead-simple it is to start DOING things with it. And how is possibly the most-used language there is, ubiquitous in web development. And how MASSIVE the community around it is, and how many learning resources there are.
So yeah, go for it. GL;HF.
It’s always worth to learn something new.
Absolutely worth it.
Even if you continue to favor Go, I find that the best devs in any language are the devs who know a lot of other languages very well.
That gives them the perspective to understand what any given language does particularly well, so that they can lean into that, and also be aware of paradigms they can borrow from other languages if the use case is appropriate.
Check out Phaser.
A pet project with a sufficient incentive (here, friends) is a perfect opportunity to pick up a new language too!
Yeah i was thinking this was the perfect time to learn new things without pressure, thanks for confirming my thought :)
Exactly this. The more languages you know, the more you understand how to solve problems independently of the language and the faster you’ll pick up new languages.
I’ve started learning coding from Pascal and Delphi in middle school, then moved to C++ in uni. After that learning Java wasn’t that hard, and I’ve been picking up Python recently. Even learned some VBA for Excel macros that came in handy a few times. And got a bunch of SQL/database management experience along the way.
(Developer here) HTML, CSS and JS are always good to know anyway. For a video game, it depends if you want something really “video-game like” (in which case I advise to use a game engine the can be run in a browser, like Godot) or just an interactive interface with buttons, images and text.
For the latter, I would advise to use one the numerous JS frameworks (Solid, Svelte, Vue or whatever) but if you don’t know JS at all, learning it from scratch could be good. Plus, you can make really pretty animations with CSS!
I know Go is a possibility for browsers, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the best to make a game.TLDR;
- You want a real video-game --> Godot
- You want a web interface --> SolidJS/Svelte (Both are good and easy to learn so the choice is yours) + CSS for animations
Thanks ! I tried Godot once but the ui didn’t click with me, idk, i think i prefer when everything is a line of code, but maybe i was not in the right mood at that time, i should maybe give it anither chance someday
Yes it is.
There is nice gameengine to play with, like https://www.babylonjs.com/
Typescript or even JavaScript now are nice to work with.
Oh wow this looks overkill for my project here but i keep this link somewhere, i didn’t know this existed thanks
turning this into a webapp is a fine choice and if it’s intended to run locally without sharing state with other players you can do this completly in browser with javascript no problem.
https://eloquentjavascript.net/ is a good book for learning js, that is freely available online.
From my understanding of what was, and what is, learning the Unix/Linux systems may benefit you much in the future as the rest of the world is starting to feel the pain of dealing with these other, more mainstream technologies.
It’s always worth it to learn something new! Go for it! I enjoyed working on the small projects I made in JS
I find coding fun and relaxing, so I say learning it is fine.
One piece of advice when learning, try very hard to grt over the “this has probably been done better before” mindset.
Its ok and good for learning to try remaking an existing thing as an exercise. The goal isn’t always making the thing but exercising the skill.
Js/ts is fine to learn for those kind of games.
Typescript is actually a pretty nice language (under the circumstances), you’ll almost certainly be able to derive some real value from having learned it (even if it in the end would turn out to not be the best choice for your game).
I would argue it’s better to have a good grasp on Javascript before tackling Typescript. The Typescript type system (the only reason to bother really) leaks Javascript quirks in different ways which aren’t going to make much sense without the underlying knowledge.
Is it worth to learn javascript
Sure. Learn it and every other language you come across. Why wouldn’t you?
Dumb me asking devs if i should do dev things :) i wanted to be sure that it was a good direction for my project, + right now a guy named claude is slowly destroying my motivation to learn code further so maybe i just needed to ask a community to find motivation back and feel supported :b
This isn’t a support group… If you want to know if it’s worth it to you to do something then that’s a judgement call we can’t make for you.
In my, let’s just say “many”, years of development I’ve learned a dozen or so languages. Basic, Pascal, c, c++, assembly (x86), Java, ksh, bash, vb, powerbuilder, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, R, go, rust… I never asked anyone “is it worth learning” though. All languages have similarities which makes it easier to move from one to another. But they also have differences which expand your way of thinking. You learn from them all.
If learning is “worth it” to you, then do it. If not, then don’t. I can’t decide that for you.
JS is pretty easy to learn and there are SO many resources out there that will allow you pick it up easily so why not? Plus as someone who has been a web dev for decades now HTML, CSS, and JS are very valuable to learn. CSS especially as even many none web based stuff in the FOSS community utilize it for config customization. All of which is very easy to learn and then it opens you up for stuff outside of game dev like web development and webapp development.
Yes, just do it.
Knowing another language is always good, and the best thing about JavaScript is that there is so much available source code to read out there. It’ll be super easy to learn and you’ll be shocked at how much you can do in pure JS. I once wrote a graphics editor that blew my item mind…
no
do it in rust
Mmmh why ?
Rust looks nice but i don’t see why it would particularely fit this project, + i already know C, Go and python so learning another generalist language doesn’t hit me as a priority right now ?
