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[Alistair Aitcheson]

I'm always recommending them to other people, but to be honest I've rarely even touched them myself. I tend to feel quite comfortable with programming, and I normally reckon I can do all the repetitive stuff myself faster than I would learn another interface and toolset. I also try to make my methods and components re-usable so that I don't have to worry as much if I move to a new project.

I personally feel I'm faster at getting what I want done in code (due to years of practice) than finding a new toolset that does it for me but having to work out all my own workarounds for specific stuff I like to do.

I can definitely see the benefits of game dev editors though, especially for prototyping.

[Hima]

The problem with most editors I have is that it doesn't support displaying text in my native language. Those that do are either too expensive or not really what I want to use. Hence, it forces me to start with programming from scratch with various libraries and frameworks.

I don't hate GameDev editor, really. I started from using RPGMaker, then learned Ruby programming language and then move to C/C++,Java,C#,Python,Basic,BlitzMax etc. But like many people here have said, sometime game editor make easy things hard. To do something simple, you have to follow a specific way to do it. With so many features, sometime it can be overwhelming.

Also, sometime I pick a programming language and a game framework/library just because it looks fun. I don't like Java but now that I saw Slick2D, I feel like trying to make a game with it.

Another reason is that I know how hard it is to create a game framework/library/engine. So whenever I see people nice enough to put it out there for free, it makes me want to support them. And the best way to show your appreciation is to make a game or something out of their library/framework/engine.

[LazyWaffle]

Sometimes building whole games from scratch can be overwhelming. The highest I've ever programmed above GML is LUA with the Love library, which I still use a lot. GM is still great for prototyping and making small projects, and I don't really get why so many people hate on it aside from the fact that it's inefficient and single-platform.

[FatHat]

Well, my experience with Unity is that as often as they make hard things easy, they make easy things hard. Something that would be as simple as 10 lines of OpenGL code simply become impossible to do without a difficult, hairy, and expensive workaround. Often this is because what you wanted to do is simply does not fit into the Unity/Game Maker way of doing things.

Quoted for truth.

This is what always gets on my nerves with game editors and other peoples engines -- I know exactly how I want to do something, and it's very easy, but I have to translate it into whatever weird abstraction they're hiding the guts of the machine with.

(This is incidentally also why I hate most web frameworks)