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March: Had an idea for a coding project. Felt it was insane to start from scratch. Got Unity.
Stared at the mountain of setup and learning work. Stalled for months.
Today: File->New->Empty Project. Opened Vulkan tutorial.
Typed more code in 2 hours than in the last 6 months.
Stared at the mountain of setup and learning work. Stalled for months.
Today: File->New->Empty Project. Opened Vulkan tutorial.
Typed more code in 2 hours than in the last 6 months.
Really drove home to me that programming is two things: One is writing code. The other is everything it takes to get to where you can write the code.
I love the former. I loathe the latter: Platform details, package management, build config, sparsely-documented plugin APIs.
I love the former. I loathe the latter: Platform details, package management, build config, sparsely-documented plugin APIs.
It was both humbling but also illuminating to realize that I would rather write another entire vector math library, resource manager, logging system, and all the rest, from scratch, if it means I spend 100% of my time able to fully wrap my head around the codebase I'm working in.
I really have a powerful aversion to the sort of "fumble around in the dark and get things apparently working and move on without fully understanding" approach necessary to work with a large existing system I don't fully understand.
Here's an example:
Here's an example:
I wanted to just write C++ code for my app. So I thought I'd use Unity's native plugin API to push control into a C++ DLL and do all my stuff there.
Docs are pretty light and I couldn't find good examples. I decided to use the style where you call in from C# script code...
Docs are pretty light and I couldn't find good examples. I decided to use the style where you call in from C# script code...
After much fumbling and build steps (trial and error finding where the DLL should go, etc) I got it working. My app could print an integer given to it from C++, hooray!
Except I couldn't rebuild the DLL with the Unity editor running because it kept it loaded. So I googled that..
Except I couldn't rebuild the DLL with the Unity editor running because it kept it loaded. So I googled that..
... found someone had a solution on github that added a middle layer, you name your DLL with an underscore, etc. Grabbed that and hooray, it seemed to work.
Mentioned to a friend who knows Unity well and he said "Oh that shouldn't be necessary, you must have set it up wrong."
Mentioned to a friend who knows Unity well and he said "Oh that shouldn't be necessary, you must have set it up wrong."
I know this is all solvable and I would have eventually figured it out. But I realized just how unpleasant I find it in the meantime. Coding as chicken sacrifices / chewing gum / bailing wire makes my skin crawl.
This reinforces my preference for code reuse via *modules*, not *engines.* I'm not really going to write a new math lib, because they exist and are easily understood with clean interfaces. This is the @radgametools approach I've always loved.
I want to type my own main loop.
I want to type my own main loop.
I'll admit, though: It bothers me that I'm this way. I wish I had the discipline to power through all the time in uncertainty and half-understanding, because I know I'd get the thing done faster.
At some point you just have to call it and work with what you got, though.
At some point you just have to call it and work with what you got, though.
