I code modern C# during the day and Unity for fun and I found this a really good roundup.
It's also worth noting that Unity does all sorts of OO-breaking filth before passing to IL2CPP.
C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
51–60 of 105 posts
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#52As a primarily C# developer who has done some game engine work, I recently gave Godot a go for licensing reasons. Apart from some quirkiness I'm fairly impressed. Much nicer C# support compared to Unity. I've done a fair bit of Unreal C++ but to be honest unless you really need the performance that's just too much hard work.
Having said that getting the code working properly with a nice 3D UI is my priority, not having a slick game with some code doing some mundane stuff in the background.
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#53A lot of game devs are terrible programmers. A friend of mine 10 years ago asked me for help with his Unity project. He is not a tech savvy person but we both took programming in high school, enough for him to make small games with a lot of tutorials and stack overflow. His codebase was horrible, a lot of logic that I would have already though of abstracting away. For example saving dialogs on json files and the cond…
Solo dev also just doesn't need a lot of abstraction. You're adding a lot of noise for what sounds like zero benefit to developer and especially not the player.
Game dev is also a lot more agile than other projects. Solidifying structure is just more to rip up later unless you really know what you want to ship.
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#54I prefer Godot over Unity honestly. Not just because the engine feels better but because it's accessible, which is what matters to me. Unity isn't and probably never will be, so meh. Sure you can make accessible games in it but the editor itself isn't accessible so it kinda defeats the point of being able to make accessible games in it in the first place. And don't even get me started on Unity's licensing model. Godot's superior C# support is, IMO, just a cherry on top.
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#55A lot of game devs are terrible programmers. A friend of mine 10 years ago asked me for help with his Unity project. He is not a tech savvy person but we both took programming in high school, enough for him to make small games with a lot of tutorials and stack overflow. His codebase was horrible, a lot of logic that I would have already though of abstracting away. For example saving dialogs on json files and the cond…
To be a bit more charitable: I'd say that generally games involve a lot more special-casing than most code, and more planned out scripts (in the movie sense) of things happening, which tend to be antithetical to good coding practice, and encourage spaghetti, which begets more. In my experience, games that are procedural tend to be much cleaner code-wise, because they tend to fit the model of cleaner code better. I th…
IME you have so little reuse, and ship on a fixed schedule regardless of code quality & bugs this really isn't as critical as software built with the intent of lasting a long time & evolving. The games I've worked on (in hindsight) feel a lot like "vibe-coded without AI".
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#56Some nice tips in here ([field: SerializeField] for example) - but as others note, it's not about modern code, as many of these features have been available for an embarrassingly long time. It's always felt to me that there's some fundamental friction between idiomatic C# and Unity.
I remember, after reading about new features C# 8.0, someone wrote that C# 9 would write all your code for you, and that C# 10 would just mail you a check every month. How the times have changed...
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#57As a primarily C# developer who has done some game engine work, I recently gave Godot a go for licensing reasons. Apart from some quirkiness I'm fairly impressed. Much nicer C# support compared to Unity. I've done a fair bit of Unreal C++ but to be honest unless you really need the performance that's just too much hard work. Having said that getting the code working properly with a nice 3D UI is my priority, not havi…
I can't comment on Godot or Unity which both use primarily C#.
Unreal engine which uses C++ primarily, has the problem that it's a humongous mostly legacy code macro heavy system .
If anything being proficient in C++ before you start is harmful because of the puckering of orifices when you hear about it's mostly quirky powerful macros all the way down.
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#58Unity's C# has always felt like C#'s mentally challenged cousin. C-not-so-sharp. The custom == convinced me that allowing operator overloading on built-in operators is one big mistake.
For those wondering, Unity overloaded the == operator in two specific situations, such that obj == null will return true even though obj is not actually null. More details on this archived blogpost: https://web.archive.org/web/20140519040926/https://blogs.uni...
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#59A lot of game devs are terrible programmers. A friend of mine 10 years ago asked me for help with his Unity project. He is not a tech savvy person but we both took programming in high school, enough for him to make small games with a lot of tutorials and stack overflow. His codebase was horrible, a lot of logic that I would have already though of abstracting away. For example saving dialogs on json files and the cond…
You think that's bad. Wait until you see some non game developer coders (I'm being sarcastic of course. The comment I'm replying to is incredibly naive).
Re: C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think as a solo developer there's actually a good argument for increasing code density and coupling (things which in large multi developer projects are seen as spaghetti), as it can help you keep a lot of that code in mental and visual context at one time. It loses flexibility and readability for others, but you don't usually have enough time to concern yourself with such flexibility if you're working on a project…
This is pretty anti-thetical to most good practices but the older and more experienced I get the more(13 years as a C# dev) I think copy & pasting sections of code is wayyyyyy more appropriate than extracting into a method/class/library or other forms of abstraction. Everything starts out with good intentions when someone comes along and says “hey you could make that an abstraction” and I just clench my jaw because I…
KISS is also good practice.