[quote name='Programmer Rami' timestamp='1355749217' post='5011666']
I really think that professionals wouldn't call it game programming unless I make my own engine starting from OpenGL

Wait...what?
You could make a video game any way you want to, and as long as that method allows you to create your dream end product it doesn't matter how you got there. Plenty of professional and semi-professional studios use unity. Unless you want to take it up as a project for fun, you should never "need" to make your own engine. The people at OpenGL already did that for us.
[/quote]

Yes, this is misleading. People use middlewares, that's why there's Unity, CryEngine, Unreal, Ogre 3D, and all that so you don't have to always start from scratch, even among pros.

It takes time to master multiple skills. To make a nerdy analogy, a fighter-mage combo requires more time to level up than a straight-up fighter or mage.

I think I have a good analogy for using someone else's engine to make a game. Using Unity to make a game is like using paint and paintbrushes to make a painting. No one would say that a painter is any less of an artist or his painting is not as professional because he did not gather ingredients to make his own paint, make his own paintbrush out of fibers and wood, and make his own canvas, and stuff like that. A game engine is just a tool that is available to make a game with. If you really want to game "from scratch" and not use anything someone else made, you have to invent your own kind of computer, make your own programming language, etc. A programming language is already essentially like an "engine" for machine code.