Discussing potential C# replacements

[FlooferLand]

A bit of an out there proposal, but this engine has struggled a lot adopting and integrating C# and there are still a lot of missing features and C# adoption is generally low.
From having large previous problems integrating Android support, to now struggling with web support; I've heard C# support is very difficult to maintain, especially as Microsoft rarely listens, puts issues on hold for years, and generally makes supporting C# difficult.

I'm wondering if people would be interested in deprecating C# in favour of a custom static language built from scratch for game development, something along the lines of a compiled C-style GDScript-like language with all the GDScript goodies like hot-reloading.

There are some languages I have in mind that fit that description, but making a brand new language is always possible, as GDScript exists and is highly adopted.

My main contender would be BeefLang:

• Built from the ground up for game development
• Syntax is nearly 1:1 with C# in most cases
• No GC; Manual memory management
• Licensed under MIT
• Actively maintained for the past 5 years and created by the co-founder of PopCap, though it is not controlled by a corporation
• Support for desktop and web, including experimental support for mobile and consoles
• Good IDE integration (+ great debugger, includes memory leak detection)
• Neat modern syntax features that speed up development (ex: if a function takes in a type of SDL2.SDL.Scancode, you can pass in .BackSpace instead of SDL2.SDL.Scancode.Backspace)

I'm not sure how Beef integrates/embeds into other projects, but it would be easier to work with the lead maintainer for any special-use cases Godot needs than it currently is to work with Microsoft.

Just throwing ideas out there!
I would assume even if official Beef or "GDSharp" support is added it wouldn't be public until 5.x due to C# still having a decent amount of people adopting it (myself included) and migration would require project rewrites

[dsnopek]

I don't think changing the officially supported languages is up for consideration at this point.

However, you could certainly add support for BeefLang (or any other language) as a GDExtension! If it were to become very popular, that could help make an argument for official inclusion? However, I think that would still be super unlikely. But having it as a GDExtension would at least allow you and other folks who want it, to use it.

[Meorge]

An important consideration regarding replacing C# with BeefLang: As far as I'm aware, one of the big reasons people use the C# support in Godot is because they can take advantage of the wealth of C# packages/libraries that already exist for various tasks. So BeefLang would need to be able to support C#/.NET packages in order to work as an effective replacement for C#.

[FlooferLand]

Fair. Using MIDI parsing libraries and all sorts of weird libraries is actually one of the reasons I currently use C# with Godot.
The only language I could suggest that has an ecosystem as good as C#'s would be Rust, and well, godot-rust/gdext is pretty good xD. Though, Rust is more of a C++ replacement than a C# one

[sockeye-d]

I think another aspect for C# is that a lot of people already know C# and would most likely want to continue using the language they're familiar with

[FlooferLand]

True, probably why most Unity users ended up using C# when they moved over.
Though, something like Beef has almost nothing different from C# syntax-wise other than having no garbage collector, and users still had to adjust to a completely different API (Node scripts vs Monobehaviour components) so I wouldn't figure it'd be that hard unless the users in question are new to C#