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Do I need to learn C++ to use Open GL?

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3 Answers

up vote 29 down vote accepted

Not at all! Due to its simple C API, OpenGL has bindings available for Java, Python, Ruby, and just about any other language you can think of!

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up vote 6 down vote

OpenGL is a C API. There are bindings for other languages but samples in books and tutorials tend to be written in C.

Because of this knowing C can help. You definitely don't have to learn C++ to use OpenGL though.

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up vote 1 down vote

Not necessarily. In fact, OpenGL is native C. There is JOGL, which is a Java wrapper.
OpenGL ES, which is for the iPhone. I believe this is in Obj-C as well as C/C++. [Not sure, think so]
I think things like PyGame end up as OpenGL in the end, and they're done in Python.

But for raw OpenGL for the PC, the only choices I know of are C, C++, or Java.

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Obj-C is a strict superset of plain C. The OpenGL ES API is a pure C API, so the Obj- part of it is irrelevant. – greyfade Jul 29 '10 at 15:50
Apologies for that. I took them to be different languages. – The Communist Duck Jul 29 '10 at 19:17
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Pygame by default does not end up as OpenGL in the end; SDL's default rendering model is CPU-side framebuffers. You can use Pygame with OpenGL, but none of the core Pygame documentation covers how to do it. – Joe Wreschnig Oct 14 '10 at 10:39
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Pyglet however is a Python library that has much of the functionality of Pygame but which does actually use OpenGL for rendering. – Kylotan Oct 14 '10 at 15:57
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OpenGL-ES is not only for iPhone.. – Gustavo Maciel Jan 6 '12 at 1:42

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