As far as "why build a shitty version of XYZ" well. simply put it is to learn how to not build shitty versions of things. I dunno how you learned bass, but most people probably tend to learn some riff they like, then once they have that experiment with modifying it in various ways. then maybe doing scales/triads etc or something equally well trodden making tetris (or pong, or pacman, or space invaders, etc) is learning a well known riff. sure you could just aimlessly pluck the strings until you stumble on something you like, but if you have an idea in mind, even one already tread it's generally easier to get to a place you want to be.
if programming games, it really is probably most optimal to speed run through the history of games to the branch point you want to go, if you /really/ want to have a good understanding. or just use a prebuilt engine + prefabs and kludge some hacky thing from there. that might be a bit like taking samples and ripping them apart for some song. not wrong, but also not the same as knowing how to play it.
but eh. at this point i become hypocritical. I have been wanting to godot for a while and was like, i'll do a break out, then a pacman, then a mario, then a metroid, then a doom, then a kanon, then finally the game i want to make. but uh. I have a paddle moving, ball bouncing and got to bricks and got side tracked halfway through making the sprite and havn't touched it since... ... (so like 40 minutes maybe... ... .. ... . )
well. simply put it is to learn how to not build shitty versions of things.
I dunno how you learned bass, but most people probably tend to learn some riff they like, then once they have that experiment with modifying it in various ways. then maybe doing scales/triads etc or something equally well trodden
making tetris (or pong, or pacman, or space invaders, etc) is learning a well known riff.
sure you could just aimlessly pluck the strings until you stumble on something you like, but if you have an idea in mind, even one already tread it's generally easier to get to a place you want to be.
if programming games, it really is probably most optimal to speed run through the history of games to the branch point you want to go, if you /really/ want to have a good understanding. or just use a prebuilt engine + prefabs and kludge some hacky thing from there. that might be a bit like taking samples and ripping them apart for some song. not wrong, but also not the same as knowing how to play it.
but eh. at this point i become hypocritical. I have been wanting to godot for a while and was like, i'll do a break out, then a pacman, then a mario, then a metroid, then a doom, then a kanon, then finally the game i want to make. but uh. I have a paddle moving, ball bouncing and got to bricks and got side tracked halfway through making the sprite and havn't touched it since... ... (so like 40 minutes maybe... ... .. ... . )