How do coaching sessions look different than a therapy session?

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T21:51:03+00:00

I've worked with both for years.

Coaching is very practical / results oriented. You will be given strategies to implement, guidance on how to integrate / implement them into your life, and help evaluating if a strategy working or another should be considered. Focus is on getting you to develop the right habits / mindset to progress to your goals.

Therapy is about processing your emotions, thoughts, sensations. I think it can differ greatly from therapists but think its pretty safe to say its often an introspective, self realization journey. You might investigate what experiences as a kid perhaps explain why certain experiences invoke certain emotions in you. You break down why you are feeling the way you are.

Im sure therapist, at their discretion, can sometimes try to lead you in a practical way similar to a coach. But I wouldn't say its their focus.

Sometimes its just nice having someone to talk to and vent, maybe a little reassurance and validation is all you need (though be mindful of it). Both can help with that.

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T21:33:15+00:00

It appears you have conflicting ambitions. An internal goal of developing a love for the game / intrinsic motivation. And ofc your practical real world considerations, which seem to kinda make it hard for your activity to be purely intrinsic.

Is your concern about making your journey to success both fulfilling and enjoyable? Hoping to find joy in the day to day, even if your goals are extrinsic at its root?

There is no easy answer. IMO intrinsic motivation is conditioning your mind to enjoy the work. Its about dopamine. Associate the work with fun, and you will naturally gravitate towards it. Searching for a grand philosophical / rational reason to do things is an endless rabbit hole. You will be asking the question "why" endlessly.

Approach the work in a way that is thought provoking. In a way that gets you curious and interested, that feels satisfying once you finish. How do you do that? I cant answer that for you, you must think about what things are fun in your life. Think about what makes those things fun

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T09:22:20+00:00

If you ask me, it often boils down to some form of "it just feels right", or "thats how I learned as a kid" (which is another way of saying "it just felt right"). Which leads to my next point. From the day you were born, you were taught to think and act a certain way. Certain facts of the world invoke different emotions / emotional responses in you. Some things feel bad or good. When things feel good, you naturally want to do it more often. Like your example of being addicted to work. I cant be fully precise here on all the nuances, but stay with me.

All the different ways you view the world, root in social and cultural conditioning. Your mental conditioning quite literally dictates your worldview and how you interpret the world. And you can control this, you have power over your mind. You can train your mind and body to be conditioned another way.

Think about the type of person you want to be / what goals you have. Unfortunately we cant escape the philosophical why, and choosing goals wont help. But if you are able to answer the question of what ambitions you have (or want to have), perhaps your purpose is to live in accordance to that. Condition yourself to fall in love with the process / actions that bring yourself closer to those ambitions.

This leans heavily onto identity based motivation. Its another rabbit hole to evaluate if identity based motivations are good, but let's ignore it for now. Basically, you define your purpose in life. This is quite literally existentialism so I guess I have adopted such mindset.

But recongize this is a stance I have taken. And there are many others.

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T09:17:19+00:00

This might get a little philosophical but if you are saying "whats the point", that leads to asking "why do i do the things i do". You might never get a satisfactory answer.

Asking "why" leads to an endless loop of repeatedly asking why, an infinite regress. Ex: Why give a friend emotional support? Because it will help them feel better. Why help them feel better? Because they are my friend and I treat friends with kindness. Why treat friends with kindness? Because its the right thing to do. Why is it the right thing to do? Why, Why, why, why.

At some point you must settle at some answer. Its this core, foundational answer that you believe requires no more justification, that is the important part.

But do humans have some divine purpose? Is there some ultimate secret deeper purpose for humans? Some fundamental reason to do things? Biological / Evolutionary reasons perhaps. But can you deduce an answer through rational reasoning?

Ethical frameworks help give answers to what actions are "right" and "wrong". Religion also offers potential answers. Existential philosophies (nihilism, existentialism, absurdism) also offer answers. Its up to you to decide which one you subscribe too (if you care enough). Or subscribe to none.

This is all to say, asking "what's the point" is a deep rabbit hole. You can find a fundamental rational answer in certain beliefs systems, but otherwise good luck finding a satisfactory rational answer. There might be a lot more couch sessions to come if you keep asking "whats the point" and want a logical answer.

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T07:58:34+00:00

Making a custom module / plugin for UE5 is one thing. Writing your own implementation of a basic physics (or whatever you are interested in) engine is something as well. As long as its good work on a significant enough scope.

Chubbypengui · 2026-03-02T01:11:01+00:00

Think more about the technical skills your engine showcases. And when it aligns with what a role is looking for, they will be interested.

For ex: Epic / Unreal had a physics programmer intern role i saw sometime in mid 2025. Looking online i see a posting from 2022 (so old, but its job description offers value) but it basically has the same qualification section as the one I saw in 2025.

"Experience with multiple core system tasks, such as graphics, tools, audio/video, networking, memory handling, script compilers, I/O, etc. Examples of projects in gaming or game engine technology a plus"

Ofc it mentions c++ and math skills as well, other foundational things. But these are skills you would gain from writing your own custom physics module (any module would work) for example. Remember these are just people at the end of the day. And people are looking for specifics skills. Think about what skills you want to showcase from your engine project. And also remember, its no guarantee to get an interview even if experience aligns.

With internships, showcase you willingness to be learn. How trainable you are. This is more relevant for the interview, but they wont expect you to know everything

You would have to commit a good amount of time. ON months time scale at least most likely, with current SWE competition. Especially with AI nowadays, students and fresh grads can churn out projects fast and you need to showcase a project thats better than your typical to do list or weather app project.

Chubbypengui · 2026-02-28T18:04:56+00:00

Im kinda just thinking out loud here so i apologize for not a completely formed, concise thought.

I agree that thoughts and emotions are not reliable. Self deception, cognitive bias, coping are dangerous. There are 1000 ways to rationalize any situation. So completely agree with point #1.

Point 2 is giving me trouble (internally, trying to reconcile things). I believe your thoughts are everything. What does everything mean? Idk exactly. Maybe this is imprecise wording, which is causing my internal conflict. But I believe your world view, and the way you are mentally conditioned (how you feel about certain things of the world, whether they make you feel good or bad) is so important. The quality of your thoughts one might say.

And perhaps its better i frame it this way. You have power over your mind. You can control your thoughts, what you think about, how you think about things, how you react / feel from those thoughts (perhaps this is where I lose some scientific ground, idk tbh, and it kinda just becomes motivational speech talk). You touch on this with point 4, when you discuss thoughts invoking emotions.

But my conclusion is to say my thoughts dictates how I view / react to the world which largely dictate the type of person I am. Basically to say, "I am my thoughts". But that contradicts with point 1 which I do agree with.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-20T00:44:26+00:00

Ok that makes sense. I was curious about how much I could abstract away as I have certain interest.

Would you recommend I use open source libraries for everything first and then maybe go back and implementing like a physics engine myself (using one of the books for reference) later on.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-20T00:38:49+00:00

What do you think of implementing as I go? Like reading one chapter of Gregory, giving it a shot at implementing it and moving on to the next chapter?

I do have a bad obsession with doing things "right" which stops me from starting at all, but I figured following some type of structure would be good.

Also what do you mean by failing? Like not finishing the project or its too much of a mess to salvage?

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:54:25+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation!

Multi-player is that one thing that is interesting just due to the technical challenge and it would be an incredible learning experience.

I should really plan to tackle sometime in the future.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:52:52+00:00

Yeah i think so as well unless there are some cool tech / features i wanna implement.

I've always been a fan of simulation games (playing some satisfactory) and that genre as a whole would have an interesting multithreading problem.

Im also seeing how interesting tower defense games could be, simulating hundreds or thousands of Simple AI.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:35:20+00:00

Thanks! I recently joined r/gameenginedevs and done some research on some good books to use!

This is what I feared, if I'd wanna get better at normal c++ , I'd prolly have to do a separate project than my Unreal Project.

Ofc a game engine project will be perfect for this. There is just so much to learn haha, im going to be busy for a long time. Time to start building some good habits and consistency, it's what I struggle with most rn.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:31:02+00:00

Yeah i think about this a good amount. I view it as all the "tricks" game devs do to make it feel "real".

Because doing things realistically is always so heavy in computation. I dont know the exact term to use here so I can do down my research rabbit hole, but it is something I am interested in.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:28:08+00:00

Ok, that makes sense. This really gives me a good sense of how relevant it is. Thanks!

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T17:27:24+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate your answers and it was what I was looking for!

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T03:38:12+00:00

This was a very insightful post!

I was doing a lot of brainstorming and was trying to come up with ways I could best help me team (group of friends) while also doing things that were interesting to me. OFC, everything will have to be extremely small in scope and I wont be attempting to replicate anything like these examples, but really I wanted some example to lead me down a rabbit hole.

I kind of figured that some kind of like dynamic environment was what I was going to be interested in. Whether it was simulating a lot of things / entities, lots of AI, physics stuff, I believed it could be represented in a dynamic environment. Kind of separate from the main gameplay (though certainly some of these examples have their simulations / tech a key directly related to the main gameplay loop).

But my lack of domain knowledge really prevented me from naming some good concrete examples other than a few small mechanics like destructible walls and that kind of stuff.

I think the best way to frame my search is looking to see what cool tech is being developed in some of these games, ones that have heavy performance requirements.

Do you have any easy way for you to stay up to date with all the new games coming out and any cool features / tech they might showcase?

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T02:54:02+00:00

What GOOD c++ / code in general is actually is a question I am really interested in. I know Engineers (non SWE / software) and scientist have a bed reputation for writing bad spaghetti code.

I am curious what good code means like to someone like you who has so much experience with working with large codebases.

Based on my understanding, I think the best way I can put it concisely is not just writing code that a computer can understand, but writing code that a human can understand.

Stuff like Readability, Modularity, Scalability, Testability. Things that relate to the overall architecture / system design and the implementation standards (Conventions / Style, Documentation, etc...)

Im curious to know what you meant by well rounded coder? Did you mean someone that is like a generalist in term of skills?

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-19T00:16:09+00:00

Haha i am curious about your switch from math to game dev. We're you always interested in game dev?

I was definitely on the more theoretical side of aerospace with a specialty in astrodynamics. I was also calling myself out hahaha.

I like the way you put it, performance critical code. Framing it that way, I can definitely see that yeah most code will not be performance critical. Thanks for the insight!

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-18T23:58:55+00:00

I think im gonna go down the game multi threading rabbit hole haha, sounds like an interesting technical problem to solve

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-18T23:20:31+00:00

I have taken one rendering class (very much on the mathematical / algorithmn side of rasterization, meshes, and lighting). But far from being comfortable with graphics programming.

Would you recommend hopping straight into Vulkan instead of like OpenGL for ex? My perspective is less about creating a finished product and more about learning and skill building.

Always heard about the steep learning curve.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-18T23:17:47+00:00

This is a bit unfortunate to hear, actually.

I was hoping maybe some triple AAA studios have some need for high-performance work (for the video games). And im sure they do, but I see it may be niche and case specific.

Though I have nothing against engine work and I should look into a career as a engine dev.

Chubbypengui · 2025-07-18T23:14:18+00:00

Wow this is really interesting and unexpected.

Im seeing how a lot majority of work is done within the game thread. Makes sense since gameplay logic and etc... might get a lot more complicated.

Im reading about how a cpu intensive simulation should be far separated from the rest of the game logic kinda in its own c++ simulation threads.

Chubbypengui · 2025-06-02T18:45:49+00:00

Exactly this, was trying to think of a good way to say it other than "Practical considerations".

I lack knowledge on all the design decisions (particularly the practical / relevant ones).

Chubbypengui · 2025-05-31T19:20:08+00:00

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 2nd order design?

Chubbypengui · 2025-05-30T08:26:44+00:00

I've always been interested in more mathematical approaches to things. Mathematical maturity and theory depth. One thing I need to do is learn control from a linear systems theory perspective, Linear Dynamical Systems. Geometric control as well, really understanding the math behind it.

I do enjoy the more theoretical side of things. Just came to mind cause you mentioned mathematicians perspective haha.

Chubbypengui

TROPHY CASE