33 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Just indicating that any first time user could misjudge the engines, especially if you consider that Unreal has blueprints that could be used for a long time before the user needs to move to VS. Unity needs a code editor to make games; it doesn't have a build in one like Unreal. Making the code editor a important part of the size of the engine.

Fair enough, I totally agree with it. Unreal blueprints are powerful enough to make a game without struggling with coding.
 

35 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Having looked around the web I see these points made: Apparently with monodevelop if you make a small change you can just save and Unity will pick it up; with VS the project needs to be build. Monodevelop can be edited while the editor is running, where VS freezes editing. VS Community autocomplete is slower and some of them can't get it to work; in fact a huge amount of them struggle with IntelliSense. VS studio also re-creates scripts when the name is changed while VS is running...(all minor things)

Some can't even get VS running because the installer freezes or the Unity workshop doesn't work.

So, that's why I can't understand it - because I've never had any crash and freeze, VS solution doesn't need to be rebuilt, I can save and switch to Unity which recompiles scripts and voila. IntelliSense works like a charm. VS freezes editor only while it's loading, not a big thing.
Some people can have problems with software, that's understandable. Right. If I had those problems I wouldn't choose it too.

39 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

It must feel like someone forcing you to replace your computer with a new high-tech one, pay three times the price for it; but you can't use it because you don't know where the on switch is. You would have been happier with the old computer, it was working fine.

I believe it's just move to get more modern computer, to not stuck back, but it's not so big move to high-tech, VS is not that heavy. I think big companies should go for modern, stable and mature development. It had to be finally done. All software will be obsolete someday. 
2018 is a modern version, BUT you still can use 2017 version for a long time (LTS idea) and use MonoDevelop.

44 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Maybe Unity should have left it in, but not supported it; that way people would have moved on naturally as monodevelop broke apart.

As I mentioned above, so you can use MonoDevelop, but in 2017, which will be supported for a while. I think if they left it without support in newer Unity's version, it would be problematic in short time (a lot of bugs and lack of stability).

I'd sum it up to If you use older hardware, use older software. Older hardware you have, older software you'll use.

4 hours ago, Prastiwar said:

I'd sum it up to If you use older hardware, use older software. Older hardware you have, older software you'll use.

Well said. It's strange how many developers never even consider a older version. There is nothing wrong with Unity 2017 and will probably still be a viable engine for a year or two.

1 hour ago, SillyCow said:

You should not bring Unreal into this conversation. Besides being a much "heavier" engine

But there us a very valid reason to bring up Unreal. If Unity 2017 was a Middleweight and Unreal is a Heavyweight engine. Then Unity 2018 should be either a Light heavyweight or a Cruiserweight if you include the new tools like the material editor.

It is the inevitable march of progress, sooner or later Unity will be a Heavyweight engine like Unreal. In a year or two Unity could have all the same problems as Unreal; then maybe Godot or some other small engine will take the place that Unity has now. We see this kind of thing everywhere.

Unity is unique in the fact that it is a Indie engine as much as a AAA engine. Personally I feel that if it truly wants to stay unique it needs to keep focusing on both and not abandon the little developers for bigger developers.

3 hours ago, SillyCow said:

Didn't mean feature wise. Just the footprint.

Yes, Unreal is slower than Unity and has a bigger footprint.

The thing is to a small time hobby developer who doesn't know much about how these things work, to them Unity 2018 will have a much larger footprint than Unity 2017.

It is also inevitable that as the engine grows, adding more features, the footprint will keep growing with it.

42 minutes ago, Hodgman said:

So... new developers fall victim to cognitive bias in a completely unrelated area? I don't get it.

It's more like the large VS installer is adding to the already existing cognitive bias. Compounding the problem.

Most experienced developers would already know that Unity can support lighter editors. The problem is with small time developers and new developers. The kind of developers who you spend hours over the phone, trying to explain how the add a new environment variable to the system, only for you to drive over and do it yourself.

These kinds of developers wouldn't even consider it possible that other text editors work, even when not included in the installer.

A little bit off topic, something I can't unsee now that I have seen it.

Did any of you notice that VS intellisense also shows deprecated code? I have been working with it for years and now that I notice it annoys me. The Unity vector3 has like three deprecated euler functions that is the same thing with slight name changes.

Reading into the VS problems wasn't a smart idea, I now notice things that never bothered me.

16 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

 Maybe Unity should have left it in, but not supported it; that way people would have moved on naturally as monodevelop broke apart.

Yes, because nothing says "use our product" like shipping a built in installer for a product that no longer works...

If they had done that then you'd have started a thread shouting about how Unity shouldn't be shipping an installer for a broken tool with their product and that Unreal is clearly better because they don't...

5 hours ago, _the_phantom_ said:

Unity shouldn't be shipping an installer for a broken tool with their product and that Unreal is clearly better because they don't..

Fair point. But since it is a tick box in the downloader, chances are that people will be more lenient on it. Then again maybe not.

Teething problems are so common, this one looks like it could be easily fixed if VS Code is really supported. Then again any IDE alternative would have been a good idea, even a bad one, if only to make people feel like using VS Community was a choice they themself selected.

What a shame, all these game developers get to use, for free, a professional, world-class software development toolkit. Why the hell would any self-respecting developer NOT be using VS as a matter of course? Or is there a big community of Mac/Linux Unity developers (what DO they use?)