Andrew123108

I agree with lutzee there with regrds to the memory management but it can be a pain to get your head around at first. one more benefit of using C# for XNA is this, http://monogame.codeplex.com/ An open source version of xna which has compatibility for near enough everything, from ios to linux and metro apps. Must check this link out if you are interested. There are thousands of XNA tutorials out there and http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/ is a pretty good site for help when getting started.

I'm very happy slick put up this section and if i'm honest it was the push to get me to join these forums even if the amount of programmers on here is quite low. I'm also a brit, And I'm in my third year of my computer games programming degree. I enjoy the hardware side of things and play with that sort of thing in my spare time. My favorite language was originally C++ but through extensive use of C# for certain modules and for use in XNA I have to admit its by far my favorite language from both accessibility, ease of use and the syntax points of view. The Syntax is more familiar from a c++ perspective than the java perspective which having such an extensive API feels somewhat similar. I know C++, C#, Java, VB.NET, Erlang, CLisp, HTML, SQL, and various other languages that i know enough of to use but not enough to say i'm proficient in. I'm very fond of VS2010 and VS2012. I've used many other environments though ranging from eclipse to the erlang shell. I like eclipses usability and how it highlights the issues for debuggin and suggests solutions. But then this is from a windows User point of view. code::blocks is acceptable for linux programming but im not too keen on it. Really not fond of macs but as he said, each to thier own :P I hope more people from the tech side decided to venture over here.

For 3D game programming C++, for simple 2d games I would go for java, but I'm biased. I'm personally not a fan of Java having learnt C++ first But its all preference, My suggestion though is niether. I suggest C# with something like XNA 4.0 which does most of the engine construction for you, works easy for windows games and gives the option to port to 360. Certian sections require a bit more indepth knowledge of programming such as custom content pipelines (for things like model animatoin) but thre are packages out there that deal with that and you would most likely need the same if not more indepth knowledge for java or C++. I'm in my last year of my computer games programming degree so i've done quite a bit of everything when it comes to programming the different sections of games.