Vulkan is super appealing if you're in the industry and have the time and resources necessary to profit from its advantages. But if you're a single dev who wants to learn game engine design, you're going to have a bad time. Most people also don't get that game engine design is very far removed from actual game design. You can have a ton of fun learning math, physics and computer science when building an engine, but beware that you'll likely be mentally and physically exhausted long before you actually get to build a fun game.
>if you're in the industry and have the time and resources necessary to profit from its advantages.
I don't even know how you get into the graphics industry these days. The bar is so high and I just don't see how you get the knowledge needed for it. I graduated years ago and don't feel any closer now than back in the mid 2010's despite having a lot more experience to point to in other parts of games.
vulkan doesn't have global state, and the error handling is better
but it's not batteries-included, and that's often to be a deciding factor at small scales
i think if you're going to dabble in engine dev, you pick which one you want depending on which part of the engine you find interesting. if you want to make a game, you pick up unity or godot or something
i've heard that vulkan allows bindless textures now, so the descriptor nonsense is a bit less awful that it used to be
vulkan is appealing, but there's a high initial cost that i don't want to pay