But you'll always be fighting the engine, because these kinds of "one size fits all" engines are complex enough to be essentially another operating system above

But you'll always be fighting the engine, because these kinds of "one size fits all" engines are complex enough to be essentially another operating system above the one you'd otherwise be dealing with. As long as your desires are well aligned with the abstractions it presents it will probably save you time, but the more you drift from that the less time it will save you and eventually there's a point where dealing with it costs more time than it saves. For the level of performance the Factorio devs want it makes sense they'd opt for maximum control over everything rather than fighting someone else's implementations.