I was just wondering what language would be a good choice for developing a game server to support a large (thousands) number of users? I dabbled in python, but realized that it would just be too much trouble since it doesn't spawn threads across cores (meaning an 8 core server=1 core server). I also didn't really like the language (that "self" stuff grossed me out).
I know that C++ is the language for the job in terms of performance, but I hate it. I don't want to deal with its sloppy syntax and I like my hand to be held by managed languages. This brings me to C# and Java, but I am open to other languages. I love the simplicity of .NET, but I was wondering if, speed wise, this would be good for the job. Keep in mind since this will be deployed on a Linux server, it would be running on the Mono framework - not sure if that matters. I know that Java is syntax-wise very similar to .Net, but my experience with it is limited. Are there any frameworks out there for it or anthing to ease in the development?
Please help me and my picky self arrive on a solution.
UPDATE: I didn't mean to sound so picky, and I really don't think I was. The only language I really excluded was C++, Python I don't like because of the scalability problem. I know that there are ways of communicating between processes, but if I have an 8 core server, why should I need to make 8 processes? Is there a more elegant solution?
It may depend a lot on what language your "game logic" (you may know this term as "business logic") is best expressed in. For example, if the game logic is best expressed in Python (or any other particular language) it might be best to just write it in Python and deal with the performance issues the hard way with either multi-threading or clustering. Even though it may cost you a lot of time to get the performance you want out of Python it will be less that the time it will take you to express "player A now casts a level 70 Spell of darkness in the radius of 7 units effecting all units that have spoken with player B and .... " in C++.
Something else to consider is what protocol you will be using to communicate with the clients. If you have a complex binary protocol C++ may be easier (esp. if you already had experience doing it before) while a JSON (or similar) may be easier to parse in Python. Yes, i know C++ and python aren't languages you are limited to (or even considering) but i'm refer to them generally here.
Probably comes down to what language you are the best at. A poorly written program which you hated writing will be worse that one written in a language you know and enjoy, even if the poorly written program was in an arguable more powerful language.
Good language to develop a game server in?