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Unity Software Inc S-1

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Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#51

Post by johnfn »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #40
johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

Comparing a web library to game engine is a bit of a stretch. Unity is very nice to develop actually. It's a lot more simple than UE4 for example, but UE4 is much better suited for more complicated games, but then again, Subnautica is made in Unity, so Unity is very flexible. Neither is "bad" or "worse". Unity is obviously not perfect, but video game engines move and change all the time, that is the nature of the vid…

It's really not as much of a stretch as you might think.

Let's put aside everything that the two libraries actually do for a second, and just think about them in the abstract. React very clearly tries to guide the developer towards correct patterns and abstractions. It's clear that React developers have thought very deeply about how to lead engineers towards the happy path of code with fewer bugs in it. It throws loud errors and warnings if you do something that could even potentially lead to an error down the line. They deprecate and eventually remove broken features. And it almost goes without saying, but they finish the features they're working on, rather than leaving them in the codebase in a half-finished state.

Unity does none of these things. Unity doesn't mark old features as deprecated: you could be using a deprecated or obsolete API for months without ever recognizing it because the only communication Unity gives you is a post on the Unity blog post from years ago. (This has happened to be multiple times.) Unity doesn't tell you when you're doing something wrong - you can still StartCoroutine with a string, even though you should be using a function reference. Unity absolutely does not try to lead your code towards the happy path of fewer bugs - GetComponent, possibly the most used Unity function, can easily trigger bugs because Unity does not statically verify that the component you're looking up exists, so if you forget and remove it later, your code will crash. React is very intentionally designed not to have problems like this.

I wrote like 4000 words on this topic, if you want more detail. Feel free to dig in if you'd like: https://www.notion.so/UnityIsFundamentallyBroken-e3b1474e7af...

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#52

Post by linuxftw »

formalsystem wrote: post #22

Out of any software tools I use frequently, Unity is the one that brings me the most joy. Any reasonably complex interface is essentially a game whether it's a music composition app, simulator, MMO or even a basic form. The basic abstractions of entities and components sometimes feel like they could apply to any software project. It's seamless to animate something, add physics, style in ways that would seem mind bogg…

This was the type of information I was looking for in the comments. I don't know if what you're saying is accurate, but it speaks to the entire reason for a company to go public: Raise capital to expand the business.

Looking into the S1 highlights a Volvo customer info graphic. Unity seems to be proficiently expanding into other segments. They can really solidify their position in these other markets by having a vast breadth of talent available that knows their tooling across various industries. Unity experience will be valued as a skill set, not just game experience. That will drive further adoption of the platform.

This seems to comport with what you're saying. I think there's real opportunity here.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#53

Post by serverholic »

johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

How can the people replying to you be so fucking stupid? My god, OP isn't comparing React and Unity at a code level. He's comparing the engineering culture surrounding the two pieces of software.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#54

Post by ingenieros »

johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

They were the first commercial game engine to offer iOS support and this pretty much cemented their place in the market. Unreal used to cost upwards of 6 figures to license per game and this left indies nowhere left to go. Godot shows a lot of promise and has been steadily growing its userbase over the years, but its MIT license makes it really difficult to export to close source platforms and ultimately most devs want their games on consoles which are notoriously closed behind NDA's and other legalese. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/tutorials/platform/co...

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#55

Post by BoysenberryPi »

Unity filing for an IPO is very interesting. I use both Unity and Tableau and they have always seemed very similar to me in terms of marketing. They have massive communities and excel at getting people up to speed and making you feel powerful. However, once you get passed the "beginner-intermediate" phase you realize this isn't really all its cracked up to be but at that point you invested time into learning them and they technically get the job done so you stick with it.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#56

Post by DizzyDoo »

Like some others who are commenting, I use Unity for my job every day, and it's not been a great experience these last few years, each 'part' (graphics pipelines, documentation, Editor and tooling, and so on) has been steadily deteriorating over the versions. This article from Garry (from Garry's Mod, Rust and so on) from earlier in the year is still all accurate: https://garry.tv/unity-2020

Sadly, I wonder how much the last few years of very obviously aiming at Going Public has led the company and Unity as a software to this state. When the forums are full of "what is going on with Unity" threads and the company blog is full of "we've bought this cloud company" and "we're investing in AR for automative engineering", something isn't matching up.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#57

Post by johnfn »

formalsystem wrote: post #48
johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

If you go through this list https://store.steampowered.com/curator/31285130-Unity-Engine... Most of it is a lot more impressive than projects completed with React. Unity has a high learning curve once you want to move away from tutorials. I believe React is the same, I kept trying to learn it but would get discouraged with the new tooling and eventually give up.

I hear you that Unity has created some great projects, but that's kind of like saying that C is a better language than your favorite language because C was used to write Linux and your favorite language has never made any project that impressive.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#58

Post by johnfn »

serverholic wrote: post #53
johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

How can the people replying to you be so fucking stupid? My god, OP isn't comparing React and Unity at a code level. He's comparing the engineering culture surrounding the two pieces of software.

Lol, thanks.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#59

Post by brundolf »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #56

Like some others who are commenting, I use Unity for my job every day, and it's not been a great experience these last few years, each 'part' (graphics pipelines, documentation, Editor and tooling, and so on) has been steadily deteriorating over the versions. This article from Garry (from Garry's Mod, Rust and so on) from earlier in the year is still all accurate: https://garry.tv/unity-2020 Sadly, I wonder how much…

What I've heard is that many of the problems are growing-pains; Unity has some really deep technical debt and they're (perhaps too hastily) ripping it out and updating things, which is causing angst for devs when a) their existing projects break, and b) in some cases the old system actually gets deprecated before the new one reaches parity. But it also sounds like all of the completely new stuff that doesn't involve scorched-earth deprecation is generally well-received (and in some cases, a long time coming).

Does that line up with your experience?

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#60

Post by caymanjim »

There's no mention of Apple here, but I suspect the timing of this is directly related to Apple threatening to cut off Epic's SDK access due to the fight over app purchase fees. This was almost certainly in the works already, but now they need to accelerate it.
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