I just thought of a really good metaphor that explains why using Unity feels so bad to me, despite the fact that I usually enjoy writing code (when I do it on my own terms)

(I just read Thing Explainer so please pardon how weird my word choices are lol - I’m really enjoying writing in this style)

so, when I write code it feels like I’m building a beautiful machine. I get to pick out all of the parts that go in it and if I can’t find the perfect part I get to make that part myself

sometimes I put other people’s parts into my machine, but those parts are always one of these:

• parts that do something so simple that I could make them myself, but I just don’t want to
• boxes that do something really ugly that I don’t want to think about. on the outside of the box, there are buttons and levers that let me understand the ugly thing in a really simple way instead. and I can understand the really simple way very deeply so I still feel like I’m in control of what happens

after I’m done building the machine I can feel really proud that I made it all from scratch. I know what every piece of it does, and I’ve tested all of them, so I know for sure that it will always work. I have to know that my machine will always work or I can’t feel proud of it

it also feels good that I was in control of how every part of the machine works. I don’t have to build it in the same way that everyone else builds similar machines - I found my own way to build it that’s beautiful to me

but when I’m using Unity - it doesn’t feel like I’m building my own machine. it feels like I’m living inside a really big machine that someone else built, and I don’t understand how it works. inside the machine there are tons of buttons and levers and switches and they’re all labeled vague things like “play particles” or “stop particles” - or they’re labeled really confusing things like “secondary axis”

the Unity machine is way too big for me to ever understand. I’m not sure if anyone really understands it - though lots of people probably understand parts of it

if I want to do something in the Unity machine, I need to press buttons and pull levers until I figure out a combination that works. and once I’ve figured out the combination, I can be proud that I made the machine do what I want, but it doesn’t feel like I built my own machine. it doesn’t really feel like I understand how the buttons and levers work either. it just feels like I eventually found some levers and buttons that are working okay for now, but later the whole machine might break because I used them

if I want, I can make my own small machines to push buttons and pull levers for me. but those machines actually go inside of the Unity machine. so instead of building a machine out of other people’s small parts, I’m adding my own small parts to Unity instead

so I don’t feel in control at all - it’s actually the opposite. Unity is in control of my own machines, and I don’t get to tell Unity what to do with them. I don’t even get to control how I build my own machines, because Unity has to be able to use them, so I have to build the machines to please Unity instead of myself

I also can’t figure out for sure if my machine will always work, because I would have to test all of Unity to be sure, and nobody understands all of Unity. so I can’t ever be proud of making a working machine because I can’t know for sure if my machine will always work

so instead of feeling proud and smart because I made a machine, I feel small and lost while I try to please someone else’s machine that I don’t understand

I’m worried that Unity will always feel like a big scary machine that I’m lost in. that I’ll never feel like I get to control what it does - and I’ll never be able to prove that what I make will always work - so I can never feel proud of what I make

I’m also worried that if I want to make a machine that other people will want to use, I’ll always have to make it inside of a big scary machine like Unity. I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel safe or comfortable doing that - let alone enjoy it

@kasdeya yeah . . . this is one of our bigger frustrations with a lot of code frameworks

it's like it takes any hope of developing an intuition for how the thing works and shrouds it in fog, as we don't really have a good way to look out from where our code lives to see the rest of the application

I love the way you describe your own code writing

@brettm aw omg thank you! 😊