I always do not understand why defold is never put into the fold [sic!] of those sentiments/discussions. You can learn a clean & fun language (lua) and its JIT is maybe/probably running laps around something like GDScript, which in itself is proprietary and has no other uses for you than, ehh, Godot?? You can integrate C/C++ extensions natively, neatly exposing them through lua APIs. Its mobile and web target footprint is unbeatably (?) small, desktop at least 10x smaller than Godot or Unity. It is Open Source.
Maybe it's the "ancient" part, because more recent is always better ;)
Unfortunately, I'm really not a fan of using Lua for anything beyond simple scripting.
defold is really cool, the only downside is its really weird build system for native extensions
> I always do not understand why defold
Starting with absolutely nothing but a compiler is always going to be a worse experience (and less likely to result in anything released) than a GUI-driven and aided solution. If Defold developers had produced a fraction of the libraries that Godot has, it might have had a chance. As of now, it's worse than other abandoned engines like Solar2D (was CoronaSDK) for people entering the space. As most people know, the vast majority of games are net-losses, so engines live and die by the ease of adoption by newcomers.