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Comment by wesleyyt | Hacker News Reader

How does a software engineer with a cs/ml background get into cool and impactful industries like energy?

Improving Julia language and ecosystem would count since the language is common in energy-related HPC tasks[1] and they even got grants from DoE. See also this discussion [2] specifically on fusion research with Julia.

[1] https://juliacomputing.com/industries/energy/

[2] https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-fusion-research/2...

Same question here. I have been a bit disappointed in the portability of my similar background to problems like energy, climate, and biochem.

Therein lies the problem with software. It’s common enough now that the lab scientists can write their own code. They may need a few dedicated programmers but most of the work is not writing the code. So instead we all keep optimizing news feeds.

... I don’t buy this.

Software launches and lands rockets. You think JPL just had a couple of rocket scientists writing some python scripts on the side for the perseverance mission?

But I agree Facebook has a ridiculous amount of engineering potential wasted on a pretty useless problem (serving ads even better!)

It's easy to get an entry level job as a programmer that pays very well, and you will be taught how to be an experienced programmer on the job.

Once you are an experienced programmer in a software company, you are earning a lot, and moving out of the software industry, where the prima-donna employees are physicists or engineers, you generally take a pay cut. A fusion company isn't going to hire an entry level programmer who hasn't proven himself.

So, to answer the question more explicitly, you need to be willing to follow your interests and not maximize the bottom line. This is my 28th year as a software engineer, and I've seen this pattern countless times. I've done the follow my interests, and also follow the money jobs, and prefer the respective good aspect of each approach over the other.

In my experience, there is quite a bit of untapped potential for applying engineering/cs/ml lessons in less traditional domains - not despite, but precisely because the other scientific disciplines are embracing and leveraging computation more.

I'm happy to elaborate on a more private channel, email/twitter is in the profile.

Source: Cofounded a startup in comp.bio space ~3.5 years ago, been busy supercharging our scientists and increasing pace of innovation and haven't really ran out of ideas yet.

There is plenty of software that is needed or could use improvement. Anything from plasma simulation software to embedded firmware used in the solar industry.

thanks everyone for the insightful answers! as a follow up is there anything I can do now to prep myself for working in space/energy? like should I study physics/chemistry on the side?

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