[St_Alfonzo]

Minecraft is a good example where people talk about the programming language. The portability of Java was a benefit for both Server and Client. But it was also critized because of the inefficiency of Java.

I dont know if all this would have been better in Rust or other languages.

[bigbubba]

Microsoft now has a second parallel implementation of Minecraft in C++. They've ported this to numerous platforms, but notably not MacOS or Linux desktops.

(It's also substantially faster, but comparing it to Java edition is sort of unfair because there are a myriad of differences between the two in game mechanics, with many of the differences probably being relevant to performance.)

[young_unixer]

Java was the language that Notch felt comfortable in.

If he had started to second guess the programming language, Minecraft probably wouldn't exist as we know it.

[gmueckl]

I don't know for certain, but Java might be one of the reasons for Minecraft being as good as it is as a game. The comparatively minimalistic high level nature of that language leaves few possibilities to get lost in system level optimizations. And iterating in Java is a lot quicker than in C++ or Rust. It is an environment that helps focussing on game logic.

[0xCMP]

Eventually Microsoft rewrote it in C++ so they could run it effectively on things like iOS and Android. It took them a while to reach feature parity and some level of compatibility between them.

The C++ one didn't have all the same features as the Java one for a while, but it ran fine on weaker hardware than the Java version needed.

[boogies]

IIUC the C++ Bedrock Edition evolved from the Pocket Edition, which was announced in 2011, ~3 years before the MS acquisition in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Bedrock_Edition.