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by scott_karana
4322 days ago
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> A good smith makes his own tools The problem is, this can be taken to infinitely far ends. Editor annoys you? Modify it to your desires. Don't like the compiler? Write your own. Get sick of the programming language? Invent your own. Get annoyed with how the OS does something? Change it or invent your own. Bump up into x86's limitations? Start on custom FPGAs. Ten years later, you might still have 0% completion on your videogame, and indetermine completion on your ever-fractaling toolchain. (And this isn't just a thought exercise; I remember a HN submission earlier this year that was nigh-identical to what I describe) I would rephrase what you said as "A good smith knows his tools and their limitations, and knows when it's appropriate to make his own tools". Even when talking in analogy... a smith's apprentice would not presume to make his own tools before experiencing his master's, and even further I suspect most smiths did NOT make their own anvils, or mine their own steel... ;) There's also a healthy serving of "Worse is better" in this line of argument. |
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You could say there's a spectrum of low level/high level tools you will either work with or build yourself.
Most low level tools are now quite good enough. The more you go high level, the more will deal with specific cases that will restrain your ability to do thing the way you intended. Like the article said, Unity will fit for very small teams and very simple games, but it will be hard to do anything really complex.
I think compilers, languages and engines are better suited for more use cases than an editor like unity is. It's a dilemma of flexibility versus speed and ease of development.
ease of development/flexibility:
ease<|--#-------------------------|>flexibility
ease<|-----#----------------------|>flexibility
ease<|----------#-----------------|>flexibility
ease<|--------------#-------------|>flexibility
ease<|------------------#---------|>flexibility
ease<|----------------------#-----|>flexibility
ease<|-------------------------#--|>flexibility