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After watching how many SaaS companies with "weak" engineering have soared to astronomical valuations, I would say I'm quite bullish on Unity (as a stock), irre

After watching how many SaaS companies with "weak" engineering have soared to astronomical valuations, I would say I'm quite bullish on Unity (as a stock), irrespective of what developers think. At the end of the day, fantastic marketing is what gets CXO's and decision makers to buy-in. Look at MongoDB's performance since IPO in 2017 for perspective.

johnfn 6y ago
Honestly, that's a good point. As an engineer I can definitely get a little too focused on the engineering side of things. The MongoDB example is fascinating to me. I'd love to know why they're doing so well.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  It's because generally, software developers don't have to deal with the downsides of MongoDB, ops people do. At a lot of companies it seems to be mostly developers picking technologies, so especially if they're inexperienced then they tend not to consider the other side of their decisions.
hobofan 6y ago
> Look at MongoDB's performance since IPO in 2017 for perspective. I know that this opinion goes against the hivemind, but I wouldn't call them weak in engineering by a long shot. They obviously made some questionable/bad decisions regarding defaults (write acknowledgements, security) in order to have a lower barrier to entry, but apart from that I've had a pretty good experience with it as a stable product and good timeframes for bug-fixes. Unity is a stark contrast to that. The few years of using it sporadically for hobby projects has been a wild ride. Bugs/crashes seem to be everywhere, and when/if they are fixed just seem to be replaced with new ones. I don't know how full-time Unity developers can deal with that. Their speed of progress is also meh. Overall, if they were to stick to their (mobile) gaming niche, that probably wouldn't be a problem. However it seems like they are looking to mainly grow via other industries, and with that shoddy engineering and their development pace, I don't see them making a lot of headway there.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  The important question is how does it compare to Unreal in terms of bugs, problems, and usability?
  - hobofan 6y ago
    Not only Unreal. I think the even bigger question is how does it compare to all the incumbent tools of the industries they are trying to replace.
    - chaostheory 6y ago
      Well, who are the other leaders in the industry? Is there any other major player besides Unity and Unreal? (I'm not overly familiar myself?) What's their respective market share? EDIT: Never mind, I found it. Unity and Unreal are the market leaders with approximately 15% & 25% market share respectively. Nothing else including Havok, Godot, Cryengine or Source even come close.
      - hobofan 6y ago
        Not the _other leaders_ in the industry, but the leaders in the _other industries_ they are pushing into, like architectural/automotive/simulation visualization. In each of those they have to face very different competitors with very different feature sets. E.g. one of my past clients is using Viz4D for interactive architectural visualizations on their website for marketing purposes. For them that existing tool is already so integrated into their processes, and the feature set so well tailored to their industry, that I doubt Unity will be able to offer something competitive to what they have _today_ in the next ~3 years with their slow pace of development.
        chaostheory 6y ago
        I feel being a market leader in the gaming industry is good enough for now. There’s also still a lot of room for growth.

johnfn 6y ago

Honestly, that's a good point. As an engineer I can definitely get a little too focused on the engineering side of things. The MongoDB example is fascinating to me. I'd love to know why they're doing so well.

bcrosby95 6y ago
It's because generally, software developers don't have to deal with the downsides of MongoDB, ops people do. At a lot of companies it seems to be mostly developers picking technologies, so especially if they're inexperienced then they tend not to consider the other side of their decisions.

hobofan 6y ago

> Look at MongoDB's performance since IPO in 2017 for perspective. I know that this opinion goes against the hivemind, but I wouldn't call them weak in engineering by a long shot. They obviously made some questionable/bad decisions regarding defaults (write acknowledgements, security) in order to have a lower barrier to entry, but apart from that I've had a pretty good experience with it as a stable product and good timeframes for bug-fixes. Unity is a stark contrast to that. The few years of using it sporadically for hobby projects has been a wild ride. Bugs/crashes seem to be everywhere, and when/if they are fixed just seem to be replaced with new ones. I don't know how full-time Unity developers can deal with that. Their speed of progress is also meh. Overall, if they were to stick to their (mobile) gaming niche, that probably wouldn't be a problem. However it seems like they are looking to mainly grow via other industries, and with that shoddy engineering and their development pace, I don't see them making a lot of headway there.

chaostheory 6y ago
The important question is how does it compare to Unreal in terms of bugs, problems, and usability?
- hobofan 6y ago
  Not only Unreal. I think the even bigger question is how does it compare to all the incumbent tools of the industries they are trying to replace.
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    Well, who are the other leaders in the industry? Is there any other major player besides Unity and Unreal? (I'm not overly familiar myself?) What's their respective market share? EDIT: Never mind, I found it. Unity and Unreal are the market leaders with approximately 15% & 25% market share respectively. Nothing else including Havok, Godot, Cryengine or Source even come close.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      Not the _other leaders_ in the industry, but the leaders in the _other industries_ they are pushing into, like architectural/automotive/simulation visualization. In each of those they have to face very different competitors with very different feature sets. E.g. one of my past clients is using Viz4D for interactive architectural visualizations on their website for marketing purposes. For them that existing tool is already so integrated into their processes, and the feature set so well tailored to their industry, that I doubt Unity will be able to offer something competitive to what they have _today_ in the next ~3 years with their slow pace of development.
      - chaostheory 6y ago
        I feel being a market leader in the gaming industry is good enough for now. There’s also still a lot of room for growth.