Learning C++/Unreal Engine After C#/Unity

When your wallet's crying but your FPS is flying! The classic developer optimization strategy: spend $2000 on an RTX 4090 that pushes 240 frames per second... then display it on a 720p monitor from 2012 because "technically" lower resolution = higher frame rates. It's like buying a Ferrari but only driving in school zones. Galaxy brain move right there.

Left side: John Carmack in his Oculus days, looking like the brilliant but slightly disheveled programmer who could optimize your rendering engine while explaining quaternions over lunch. Right side: Post-Facebook acquisition Carmack, who clearly discovered the secret API that transforms cargo pants energy into executive chic. The function signature must be something like: transform(millions_of_dollars, years_at_meta) . The real optimization algorithm was inside his wardrobe all along. Still has that "I could rewrite your entire codebase in assembly before dinner" vibe though.

The skeleton of every Steam user, faithfully converting wishlist items into digital dust since the dawn of time. That wishlist is basically a graveyard where good intentions go to die. We tell ourselves "I'll buy it when it's on sale" but then we're too busy playing the same three games we've had since 2012. The wishlist is just a monument to our gaming FOMO – the digital equivalent of buying a treadmill that becomes an expensive clothes hanger.

The classic game dev paradox in its natural habitat! Players beg for solutions to stop game-killing practices, and devs respond with the corporate equivalent of Tom's shrug. "Sure, we could stop the microtransactions, predatory monetization, and rushed releases... but have you considered buying our new $19.99 'Listening To Feedback' DLC instead?" The best part is when they eventually implement those "impossible" ideas after the community backlash reaches nuclear levels. Nothing motivates creative problem-solving like watching your stock price plummet!

Anyone who's ever downloaded Unreal Engine knows the pain. You think you're getting a game engine, but what you're actually getting is a 100GB monstrosity that consumes your hard drive like a hungry beast. Epic's flagship product ships with every sample, demo, and texture known to mankind by default. Your options are: wait 3 hours for it to download or just buy a new SSD. Tim Sweeney (Epic's CEO) probably thinks storage space grows on trees.

That crushing moment when your progress bar hits 30% after you've already sacrificed three weekends and fifteen cups of coffee. The exact same feeling applies to large-scale software projects—you think you've conquered the mountain until Git informs you there are 47 more branches to merge. Enterprise Java projects are basically designed to make grown developers cry like this child. The real tragedy? That remaining 70% is where all the undocumented legacy code and unexpected requirements live.