wpetula Posted 22 hours ago Share Posted 22 hours ago The Real-World Benefits of Working on KSP Just a little something about the real-world impacts of working on Kerbal Space Program... I recently got an internship at Ansys for C++ programming. I am not a competitive programmer: I haven't learned C++, taken an official Data Structures and Algorithms class, or mastered Leetcode. So, how did I impress my interviewers? I contribute my success to my countless personal projects -- particularly KSP modding. Ansys loves KSP, and my interviewers were thrilled to hear about my work as a modder. Your work on this niche, occasionally weird game is a professional tool. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Put your mod on your LinkedIn. Mention it on your resume, if relevant. There's nothing quite as impressive and alluring as seeing "Planet Engineer" on a CV. To the average person, someone who simulates rocket ships and builds life-sized planets is indistinguishable from a wizard. KSP isn't the end-all-be-all of resumes, of course. I'm learning C and Data Structures & Algorithms this semester. I'm also slowly progressing through Leetcode. However, I'm almost certain that without KSP, I wouldn't have gotten my internship with Ansys. A little note about CS internships... KSP lets me exercise an increasingly necessary trait among computer science students: creativity. Getting an internship in computer science today is hard. Memorizing the syntax of most modern programming languages is no longer a desirable skill now that our AI overlords ChatGPT and CoPilot have taken over. The number of tech jobs has been trending down while interest in computer science continues to rise. As a result, many internships have ludicrous entry requirements or are ridiculously competitive. How can you stand out in this mess? Ask yourself: what can I do that AI can't? AI is superhuman at making certain kinds of applications. Ask AI to create and simulate a life-sized, fully explorable celestial body, and the idea that computer science is a dead field loses its footing. The same goes for other art-infused extensions of software development. Note to the Moderators: could this post be pinned somewhere? I want others to be able to read it without it getting buried. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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