Elm vs Unity

Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests.

ML static typing is great because it's always there, you just choose how explicit you want to be and how much you want the compiler to do.

In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven.

As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web.

You can try to apply some functional programming ideas in other languages that have an imperative basis, but you haven't seen the real power unless you tried it in the environment of purely functional programming. Elm is a simple language with great learning resources and easy graphical output, which makes it easy to explore the power of functional programming. Plus programming in Elm is very readable.

All major editors have great support. With Atom for example, Elm plugins are available for linting, formatting, make/compiler support and Elmjutsu will simply overflow you with super useful functions, like navigate to referenced definition and show expression type.

The Elm Architecture means you don't need to spend valuable time and effort choosing the right frameworks, state management libraries, or build tooling. It's all built in.

Elm uses easy to use modules.

Use:

import List
import List as L
import List exposing (..)
import List exposing ( map, foldl )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(..) )
import Maybe exposing ( Maybe(Just) )

Creation:

module MyModule exposing (foo, bar)

Easy to learn, most functions have only one way, not 5 alternatives where you must study where to best use what.

Support for hot swapping and interactive programming is included.

The lack of side-effects and simple, consistent language semantics make it easy to quickly review incoming changes.

Pure functions, immutable data structures, amazing compiler, clean and homologous syntax used for HTML, logic, and optionally to replace CSS, elimination of entire classes of bugs so you don't even need most unit tests. These factors lead to better code, better programs, higher confidence, and ultimately, more satisfaction.

Luckily you do not have to learn Haskell to be able to do any Elm. It is meant to be a language that compiles to Javascript, so for Javascript programmers (Front end) not for CS students who want to learn as many different algorithms as possible.

Unity is bolstered by a huge, helpful community via its official forums, wiki, Unity Answers, and Unity Asset Store; plus the most-subscribed subreddit of any game engine.

Unity offers over 20 platforms for publishing including mobile, console, web, VR, and more.

Not tailored for specific types of games (like Unreal...), so it won't get in your way if you want to make something unique.

Overall, a coherent engine with a rational approach. People who complain a lot about being forced to hack around it usually do not read the docs, like the one that describes orders of execution, or specific functions hooks and such. Some like to say it lacks raw power where people who are used to standard optimizations have no problem. For example It is not uncommon to encounter users who complain about low FPS but forgot to activate occlusion, flag static elements, activate animations culling, and so on. As for complaints about C#, people who are transitioning from C++ were already bad at C++ before being bad at C#. They often come from the PC world where the sheer power of today's machines is very forgiving compared to the platforms we had to develop for in the 80s~90s. One of their errors is for example to never read this doc.

Unity runs very smoothly even on systems that are considered "weak" by today's standards.

For those developers who can't afford an artist, or aren't skilled enough to create their own art, Unity features an Asset Store full of a wide variety of free and paid assets that can be easily added to a game. The Asset Store has more than just music and art. It also has code and modules that can be added to games including unique lighting or GUI systems. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection.

You can use any C# IDE for it, but the ones tested which have Unity integration are:

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• MonoDevelop
• Visual Studio Code (much faster than VS, but a bit harder to set up for Unity development)
• JetBrains Rider (very fast, has lots of functionality and best Unity integration, but it is not free)

Unity provides a great state machine animation system called Mechanim allowing to separate animation from the model and assign the same animoations to different models.

The built in standard shader in Unity 5 is incredibly optimized and supports PBS/PBR.

Unity's modular system and usability allows for quickly developing a prototype of an idea. It has features like drag & drop editing, shaders, animation and other systems already in place to allow diving right into developing a game.

The way the editor is structured, by setting scripts on objects, and the use of a high-level language, C#, makes it easy to learn.

Unity is a proven game engine. It is used by a wide range of developers - from small indies to triple-A companies such as Microsoft, Paradox, Square Enix and Sega.

Unity3D provides an exhaustive documentation where everything is given a full description supplied by a number of examples as well as video and text tutorials and live training sessions to understand the ins and outs of the engine. In addition there's an ever-growing community that can offer advice to help resolve any situations that may arise.

Along with the official Unity resources, there are many high quality (and often free) third party tutorials available.

The editor GUI is very powerful and intuitive. It allows pausing gameplay and manipulating the scene at any time as well as progress gameplay frame by frame. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection.

This allows it to be more powerful than other, simpler drag-and-drop engines such as Game Maker Studio, although it can take a bit more experience to learn the workflow.

As long as the company makes $100k or less, Unity's free version can be used to release games without purchasing the pro version.

With Unity knowledge of just one engine is needed to be able to create both 2D and 3D games.

Great Community support through Forums and Unity Answers.

There's an Asset Store, providing free and paid assets (including components). It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection.