Day 1: Learning the Unity Editor

…and c# of course

Here I go into yet another attempt to learn a programming language. This time without any celebrity coders holding my hand, but instead a much more encouraging team of peers. This time it happens to be Unity and c#.

I am blown away by the comprehensive, intuitive, and powerful Unity Editor. And jealous. So jealous! Why can’t professional audio software development have a tool like this? Instead of fighting a pile of c++, compiling, validating, then finally, nearly an hour later getting to try a plugin in its natural environment, the Unity Editor lets you drag and drop components in on the spot! Instantly!

And now onto c#. I’ve seen this language dismissed time and again by plugin coders as just for script kiddies, but from my limited understanding, it looks and functions in the IDE similarly to how c++ does. In fact, much of this is made easier by my time in c++. I have a cursory grasp that this may not be as good for creating ultra low latency audio, but allegedly Jules Storer’s new Soul language is challenging even that. I am pretty excited to see such an immediate interaction between the IDE and the Unity Editor.

And of course, here comes my trouble, not so much with syntax, but with context itself. Not at all understanding the “new” keyword. Googling like mad brings back memories of the “this” keyword in c++ and neither of them do I understand, just the trauma from the professional Mountain Dew slammers who didn’t just know this stuff, but actually think in it.

At the end of the day, I am only 16% complete of what I assume my day’s goals were supposed to be, working on a 2D space shooter. But it feels like a very accomplished 16%. My professional developer friends will be laughing at me, but I am actually proud of this so far and very thankful for the program that spawned this opportunity.