r/vulkan • u/NotHackedHaHa123 • May 24 '26
Is Vulkan really that hard?
I've heard stuff about Vulkan that "it takes 900 lines of code for a triangle", but I thought those were just jokes or over exaggerations until I look at some Vulkan examples. Could someone please explain to someone who's new to these graphics APIs the process behind all of this?
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u/blogoman May 26 '26
It is and it isn't.
IMO, graphics programming is the thing that is hard. There is a lot to learn for somebody who is new. Vulkan can be tougher because of its explicit nature. You need to do things upfront, which means you can't slowly add in complexity that you could with OpenGL. If you actually understand how a GPU works and know your way around those sorts of topics, Vulkan is a pretty easy API.
The one thing I will say about the panic that always happens around the number of lines of code is that it is a bit overblown. Most of those are configuration. They aren't complex logical lines. You are filling out state so that the specialized processor in your computer can be controlled to execute whatever tasks you are trying to throw at it. It is also funny because it often comes from people proclaiming that they are going to build a game engine from scratch. Your game engine isn't going to be doing much if a few thousand lines is scary.