I know that there are probably a lot of customers that don’t have any coding background or very little. So, i understand the point of giving the majority of the code. I think they are missing out on a great experience personally.
What about us more advanced customers?
IMHO, I think providing code is fine. I find the learning curve in the APIs rather than the language. Writing from scratch is still a good exercise, but I will be coding this all in my own game soon enough. The code review is a good way to walk through this, and I’m glad it wasn’t just tossed over the wall for our own personal review. I’d say you’ve struck a good balance. Explaining where and when we might deviate from the code is more important than actually writing it from scratch.
My two cents (although I don’t know how monitored these threads are now we’re two sections ahead):
To a certain extend I’m not averse to being given code and just trusting that it works, however my struggle is when we get thrown a new set of code and a challenge to modify it slightly.
You’re not going to understand the nuances of code you have been given compared to code you’ve built yourself. This means I personally struggle a little bit with debugging/ammending code slightly in the challenges, not because it’s beyond my skill but because I have to spend time wrapping my head around what path the code is taking.
I understand we get run through it, but it’s not quite the same as building it. I can also see for the more experienced customers that it might feel a bit like you’ve paid however much you’ve paid for an engine and some explanation with a bit of learning inbetween.
It feels like the learning from a code point of view is more “Learn the API Ben built” rather than “learn to use C# to make an RPG” at this stage, but personally I’m not 100% averse to that since you can use Ben’s code or its principles in future projects. I suppose you have to look at it more as being given a toolkit.
I know that there are probably a lot of customers that don’t have any coding background or very little. So, i understand the point of giving the majority of the code. I think they are missing out on a great experience personally.
I think this actually isn’t the case, since it’s hammered all over the adverts/documentation that it won’t be suitable for people with a less than rudimentary understanding of c# and unity.
tl;dr - I think it’s primarily done for speed, and I’m kind of OK with it since I’m basically building a toolbox of stuff I can use in the future. I can see both sides of the argument though.