CS Fundamentals
Post #6500 · source on Telegram
The Duality of Developer: Knows No Trees, Builds All Engines
Description
A meme depicting a classic black-and-white Yin and Yang symbol. The white 'Yang' half contains the text 'wtf is a binary tree'. The black 'Yin' half contains the contrasting text 'ill program my own game engine from scratch'. This meme humorously illustrates the Duality of the Developer or the Dunning-Kruger effect in software engineering. It satirizes the mindset of developers, often earlier in their careers, who may lack foundational computer science knowledge (like data structures) while simultaneously possessing the hubris to take on monumental, complex tasks like creating a game engine from the ground up. The Yin and Yang represents this flawed balance between ignorance and overconfidence
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Comments
26Comment deleted
This developer's stack is perfectly balanced: zero knowledge of O(log n) lookups, infinite confidence in rewriting Unreal Engine over a weekend
Nothing says "I skipped data structures" like reinventing Unreal before you can write an in-order traversal
The same developer who writes custom SIMD-optimized frustum culling algorithms and implements lock-free concurrent job systems will still Google 'how to reverse a linked list' during their FAANG interview prep
The beautiful duality of modern game development: confidently architecting a custom ECS with SIMD-optimized spatial hashing while Googling 'difference between stack and heap' in another tab. Bonus points if your engine's scene graph is literally just a std::vector because 'trees are too complicated' - who needs O(log n) lookups when you can brute-force at 144 FPS on a 4090?
Yin: Forgets binary trees exist. Yang: Reinvents one as a game engine. Together: a perfectly balanced red-black tree of regret
Can’t define a binary tree, but volunteers to build a scene graph, ECS, custom allocator, and renderer - classic NIH where the only balanced tree is their sprint board
The Venn diagram of “wtf is a binary tree” and “writing a game engine” is a perfect circle - right up until the scene graph, quadtree, and BVH they just reinvented show up
tetris-os is a game too Comment deleted
you don't need to know that Comment deleted
Well in most cases no. But its a basic thing and if you dont even know what a binary tree is you will have no clue how to make a 3d game engine. (Yes I know it didn't say 3d in the post) Comment deleted
I mean even knowing trees is not the only thing you need for making a game engine Comment deleted
Of course not, but if you dont know what it is you are unlikely to know the rest Comment deleted
hierarchies are ntrees Comment deleted
well yeah Comment deleted
Dooms map wasn't 3d and didn't have real walls. The hitboxes of walls are a binary tree. Because of Hardware limits. (Just for an example) Comment deleted
wtf Comment deleted
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning id software did a lot of heavy drugs back in the day Comment deleted
looks like source 1 and 2 also use this Comment deleted
how Comment deleted
The map is "2d" Comment deleted
So can we say every ds is a tree?😂 Comment deleted
Hey, writing an engine from scratch is good motivation to learn binary trees Comment deleted
Tree-D game... :) Comment deleted
what engine exactly? Physics engine or graphics engine? Comment deleted
regular minecraft modder be like: Comment deleted
regular minecraft player be like: Comment deleted