Mod developers operate in an environment many software engineers never experience:
- incomplete or outdated documentation
- unstable or evolving interfaces
- no control over execution order
- no access to core source code
To build anything reliable under these conditions, you are forced to:
- observe behavior instead of trusting specifications
- design around change instead of against it
- isolate assumptions aggressively
- debug systems you do not own
These are not “game development skills”.
They are core software engineering survival skills.
Modding compresses years of real-world lessons into a much smaller and harsher environment.
Many strong engineers did not start with clean abstractions.
They started by learning how to survive messy, evolving systems.
Mod development simply makes that reality unavoidable.
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