Maybe not a great example, you can make a simple blog from scratch in like 20 lines of PHP/MySQL. I did this as a young teenager by copy-pasting some example code from Tizag's MySQL tutorial (which amazingly is still up, in its original condition![0])
(I wish I could share the original code, but I don't have it here.)
I've fallen into this trap so many times... Last time I decided to do the absolute minimum. I just glued together some Markdown library with Jinja for a total of ~50 lines of Python. Turns out you can do a lot with just that.
You can comparably do a lot by making your own engine, if you know what you're doing. Stardew Valley was written in XNA but other than that there's no engine. Lots of games written in monogame, SDL, SFML, PyGame, and other "frameworks". People also think that a 3D engine is absurdly hard but that's because they spend most of their time implementing PBR and a full featured level editor in their own custom UI framework. If you use off the shelf parts for things like physics, UI, and implement common file formats for levels then you can focus on the things you find interesting and still make a game. I'd wager there's a lot more unfished unity projects than unfinished game engine projects
I had the same initial response, but I think what parent us saying is that people should consider using this engine, rather than spinning their own?
I'm not sure I agree, as many great games are built on in-house, bespoke engines, or else custom modifications to existing engines. But for the purpose of rapid prototyping, the intended use of this engine, it definitely makes sense to use a preexisting engine in most cases.
I could be wrong about parent's intending meaning though.
I agree. However there is another trap with that. Engines which haven't made a game usually haven't solved the hard problems yet. It's just easy or fun code that works well in convenient circumstances.
And by "start a blog" I mean write a whole new blog engine entirely from the ground up...