Because I have limited time and energy. Take learning as an example:
I couldn't afford to spend a weekend learning the tradeoffs made by the top 5 WebGL JavaScript game engines AND generate the same demos for all of them to compare DX, and performance on my phone. And as I had more questions about their implementation I would have to scavenge their code again, for each question.
A sample of the questions I had (and as I asked it would suggest new question for things I didn't know I should ask):
- Do they perform sorting or are their drawing immediate? sort on z? z and y? z/y and layers? immediate'ish + layers? Frustum culling supported? What's their implementation for it if any?
- What are their GPU atlas strategies? fixed size? multiple with grouping by drawing frequency to reduce atlas switching? 2048? 4096? How many atlases? Does it build the atlas at boot or does it support progressive atlas sprite loading? How does it deal with fragmentation? What does it use for packing algo? Skyline ir something more advanced? How is their batch splitting behaviour and performance characteristics?
- Does it help with ECS? How is their hierarchical entity DX, if any? Does it math with matrices for transformations or simpler math? Shaders support? Do they use an Uber shader for most things? And what about polygons? Also, how do they help with texture bleeding? What's their camera implementation? Do they support spatial audio?
...and so on. Multiply the number of questions by at least 10.
And I asked LLM to show me the code for each answer, on all 5 engines.
This kind of learning just wasn't feasible for me before with my busy life.
So when I say "easier" it often means "made possible".
Finally let's not forget most of us in HN are incredibly privileged and can afford to learn futile things on the weekend. But for a great part of the less privileged population, having access to easier learning is LIFE CHANGING.
