Hi! Have so many questions - but I think they related to one theme. If you have some thoughts about anything below please comment! I don’t know C++ - but I already invested 1,5 years to have good understanding Unreal sub-systems Animation, AI, blueprints…I don’t have game development experience before, so it will be frustrating to understand that Engine exist only 4 - 5 years. 1,5/5 is bad proportion. What you think- am I doing wrong with this “Blueprint way” because this all will be irrelevant when new engine generation come? How long Game Engines exist? What is their common life-cycle length? May be you know some links or books about this theme? UDK looks abandoned now - why? Is this about marketing or algorithms changed so fast - and code inside UDK is absolutely irrelevant now? For example - in 2020 will be UE4 still relevant? Thanks!
Hi there,
the Unreal Engine exists since 1998.
I have played UT back in these years and the MapEditor was already amazing at this time.
You’ve got 18 years of evolved awesomeness in your hands and it still is on its unstoppable wicket sick godlike-rampage.
New Engine-Versions just mean: “many awesome technical improvements”, You still keep all your knowledge and you are just happy about things that became easier than before and about all the new features of course 
You need to keep in mind, BPs are treated like a “Prototyping thing” but you can already do pretty much everything with them if you are new to game development Even C++ Cross-Compiling for better performance is supported now. So guess what happens when they go full in and drop the “Noob-Friendliness”-Restriction of the Blueprints to support complex feature as well
With Blueprints you can focus on results instead of compiler issues and typos
Even creating an UI works better than some other UI frameworks I had to deal with.
Just my opinion as plain Software Engineer who is (well… now obviously “was”… 
) used to several Programming languages until I realized that UE4 is a full blown editor to work with
Just be welcome to the 2 Million devs that are using Unreal Engine. You can be sure, all of them want to keep everything alive until we finally get absorbed into the Unreal Engine created Matrix (Just think about why an “Unreal” Engine goes straight towards Reality and has already the Editor in VR and so on 
)
Happy Blueprinting Marooney
(fixing things) I think this comparison should solve your dilemma (other than my “fanboy” like talk which is not intended to be like that. Business is serious.)
If a big software does not evolve, it is like you will always fight with a sword instead of improving to guns over time.
So the guns of others (other Engines) will beat your sword you’re desperately trying to hold on during the fight. The community moves over to those with guns to avoid fatal death in business (which is… serious). So the swords become rusty. The Software just dies because its getting old.
This is actually what you are asking for, but you also don’t want to happen
UDK was a sword competing against other swords, but now guns seem to be better. Still your choice.
Of course you can reuse old libraries and old knowledge with some tweaks. Think about bayonets
UE4 has remaining swords as well. Just let us be exited about plasma cannons!
Thanks! I’m definitely feeling better after reading your answer. It’s time to dive into C++ to avoid my “unstable - vacuum” feeling about learning. May be I will use this gun to shoot into my foot sometimes. Any way - Thank you again!