I tried C and C++. They are awkward programming languages (I don't like the preprocessor, the strength and weakness of C). Nevertheless their compilers create the fastest executables and for me this is the only reason to develop in C/C++. To make it short I don't know of any tool, framework or library that would make me want to program in C/C++, but if I had to choose I would take the
Qt Framework with the QtCreator IDE, because of the clear API, good documentation, platform independence and good refactoring capabilities of the IDE (personal experience).
But I like speed (or at least the idea of it ^^). So I tried
D. It has a syntax as good as that of Java, low level control, optional GC (garbage collector), the ability to use C libraries and more and more and more. It was very promising. The
derelict project makes possible to use
GLFW and other libraries needed for games. So I made some tests concerning the daily use of the language and it turned out that the usability of D was indeed very good, but the speed of the executables (compiled with dmd 2.062, i386) was behind that of Java. I didn't see the point to change to D. Java was faster and had better tools.
I also tried other languages like
Go (version 1.1) and
Chapel (version 1.7.0), but not metioning the missing tools they couldn't deliver the performance they promised. (Go has multithreading disabled by default? I don't know... And Chapel had real performance problems in multithreading >.<)
By the way, the development of the XNA framework is discontinued [
extremetech.com]. One can use
MonoGame, a free implementation of the XNA API. It's actively developed and not touched by the XNAs stagnation [
thread 1,
thread 2].