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Yes building tools from scratch is a great way to learn. In my carrier a rewrote bunch of front-end frameworks, but then instead of rewriting everything from scratch I decided to simplify existing structures.

Once I tried to create my own front-end framework from scratch. I created signal library, mounting/unmouting, context etc but never able to write v-dom diffing or using existing vdom libraries.

Then I decided just implement my API on top of Preact. Preact did vdom-diffing for me and mounting/unmounting which was enough for my need.

The final project looked nothing like Preact, it even had it's own context system, data loading, signals, setup + render and context which just hooks itself into Preact Context but taught me a lot about how a front-end framework work.

by vector_spaces4 hours ago|

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Right, I think the usual point here that if your goal is to make a game, then this is usually the painful route and conveniently one that up-fronts the likely more exciting and comfortable part for a software engineer, namely the software engineering. It also tends to defer the very important business of learning rather quickly whether our idea even leads to a fun game in the first place

That said, it's still a worthwhile exercise that one can learn a lot from.

by kyzcdev3 hours ago|

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Balance is required for everything. There was a youtuber called Randy, he tried to build everything from scratch using C and it took him 6-7 years to finally release a game. Meanwhile I watched a youtuber who just made games from fake-ads in Unity and marketed it well and earned bunch of money.

Do we want money or do we want to get the pleasure of being an engineer and make money as a side quest?

There was a video of tsoding about why he doesn't have a job, he says "when I have enough money for my needs I just go into coding instead of working". I like his vision. He likes coding for the sake of programming and earns money as a side quest.

by lstodd3 hours ago|

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There is another angle: what if you want to express yourself, but, say, Unity is too limiting? Existing game engines were made to express existing ideas and while there is some stretch they do have hard limits.