[corysama]

Having spent a couple decades making engines that did ship games, now I spend a fair bit of free time helping noobs make engines even though statistically nearly none of them end up shipping games.

Making a game engine is a fun and highly-engaging means to learning high-performance programming. Yes, it would be better if you also were able to invest enough to ship a game. But, don't let the infeasibility of that goal stop you from learning and having fun.

[groundzeros2015]

I think it’s very hard to learn high performance programming for real without facing real performance problems.

I agree there is fun and learning to be had, but just note they are very different activities.

[Sleaker]

At what point of optimization does it turn into 'real' high performance programming?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[serf]

>At what point of optimization does it turn into 'real' high performance programming?

somewhat past optimizing the frame count of an entirely empty scene.

on that matter : is it a game engine if there isn't a game?

I totally agree with other comments though -- if there is no pressure to meet specific metrics or accomplish certain things with the product then there is no real pressure to improve past a window or framebuffer drawn to video, just declare it's a game engine that makes a million FPS and throw it on the portfolio.

game engine work gets tough (and rewarding) with 1) goals and 2) constraints -- without those two it's more or less just spherical-cow style work that is too ambiguous or vague for real application.

[groundzeros2015]

When the goals are defined. What happens here is you make your cool particle System which is 10x faster than Ue5 but ignore that it uses all the ram or whatever.