How often do you deal with blitting textures into vram when working on your web applications? If not very often, that means you're building on top of a stack of software that includes a rendering engine, equivalent in many ways to Unity or Godot.
> you're building on top of a stack of software that includes a rendering engine
Yes that's pretty much a web browser, isn't it? There are many types of engines, such as a business logic engine. The distinction between engine and framework is a little vague but what I'm getting at is the low-code interacting-components design approach, rather than code first. I'm wondering why that hasn't taken off.
People use Godot to create GUI apps, which has problems with the final product but in terms of workflow it works to make something functional.
Games aren't low-code. Even with UE4, people end up learning C++ because there's only so much you can do with the Blueprint flowcharts before it becomes an unmaintainable mess that grinds your development speed to the ground. It's also pretty much a law of nature that every nontrivial game eventually develops a scripting language (unless it's already written in one, e.g. Python).
But it's absolutely true that you can teach artists to code - within the limited domain - much easier than you can teach programmers to draw or write stories.
A personal opinion: I'm not entirely sure that being entirely art-driven is necessarily a good direction for games either. You can build a pretty game out of default UE4/Unity/Godot building blocks, but it'll be rather quickly recognized as a cookie-cutter game with custom art. If you want to innovate on, or even carefully tune, the gameplay itself, you need to code your way out of engine defaults.
Point taken about the amount of code - my point was more about how far you can get with the core structure before having to dive into code. Whereas any React tutorial starts with code. You don't really start by laying things out and connecting the dots as such, you start by typing.
It wasn't so much about art-driven games (I found Gris super boring which would be a prime example, though many loved it), but more about people from different backgrounds bringing new ideas. There are all kinds of programmers, or course, but as a whole I'd say artists or musicians or writers are into different things. As someone who has played games for a long time I usually appreciate something fresh or interesting. IIRC Stardew Valley and Undertale are two examples by people who didn't identify as programmers.
> But it's absolutely true that you can teach artists to code - within the limited domain
I think this is the promise of computing that we've failed to reach yet. Any person has a problem, and with a little effort, they can code up a fix. Coding as a skill like putting up some shelves, rather than engineering an entire house. Some tools get some of the way there (like Zapier, IFTTT, or AutoHotKey) but I'd love to see how far we can go.
> my point was more about how far you can get with the core structure before having to dive into code. Whereas any React tutorial starts with code. You don't really start by laying things out and connecting the dots as such, you start by typing.
I agree, this is a good point and a strong contrast.
Given how the React model is a relatively simple and specific one (DOM being a tree, data bindings forming a DAG), I'm somewhat surprised how little we seem to have in terms of UI builders. React seems to yield itself to visually constructing working, interactive sites out of pieces. And yet, as you note, everything about it starts with code.
(I guess we may be in the "startup phase", where all GUI builders are SaaS tools made by companies, who try to vendor lock you.)
> I think this is the promise of computing that we've failed to reach yet. Any person has a problem, and with a little effort, they can code up a fix. Coding as a skill like putting up some shelves, rather than engineering an entire house.
100% agree. That's why I cheer people who solve their personal and professional problems with an Excel sheet, or a half-baked mix of scripts. That's why I love tools like AutoHotkey (Windows) and Tasker (Android). Coding is a specific mindset, but that doesn't mean that you have to be either helpless about computers, or a software professional. Much as a carpenter or a remodeler would cringe at the way I fix up things around the house with judicious application of duct tape and power drill, but as long as they work, are safe, and my wife doesn't complain about aesthetics, I'm happy (and get to save money).
