I'm thinking of trying to make some simple 2d games, but I've yet to choose a language. A lot of people recommend either C++ with SDL or python with pygame. I keep hearing that developement on C++ is fairly slow, and developement time with Python is fairly fast.
Anyways, could anyone elaborate on this? What exactly makes development in C++ so time consuming? The programs I've made have been Project Euler-style in that they're very short and math-based, so I have no experience in larger projects.
It takes about the same amount of time to write the same code in pretty much all of the high level languages. The win is that in certain languages it is easier to use other peoples code. In a lot of Python/Ruby/Perl apps, you write 10% of the code and import libraries to do the other 90%. That is harder in C/C++ since the libraries have different interfaces and other incompatibilities.
C++ vs Python is a pretty personal choice. Personally I feel I lose more time with not having the C/Java class system (more run time errors/debugging time, don't have anywhere near as good auto completion, need to do more documentation and optimization) than I gain (not having to write interfaces/stub function and being able to worry less about memory managment). Other people feel the exact opposite.
In the end it probably depends on the type of game. If your processor intensive go to C++ (maybe with a scripting language if it makes sense). Otherwise use whatever language you prefer
C++ slow, python fast? (in terms of development time)