Funny, I've just found the original email (at least the text) that I've sent to Lee Vermeulen when I applied at Alientrap after I saw a screenshot of Nexdm something on flipcode - RIP

Note that this dates back to: Saturday, 23. August 2003, 19:25:14

I'll just tell the truth :

I'm almost 16 years old and live in Germany, but I do understand matrices, etc.
I have 8 years of programming experience but only 2 in c/c++.
I just learnt OpenGL, so don't expect me to be a John Carmack.

Now let's get to the positive aspects.
I want to learn, learn, learn - so give me a problem and I'll work until I've got a solution.
Math is not a problem to me, I like it pretty much (especially when I finished calculating some formula).

I've got a adsl flatrate, so I can always search the internet for additional informations.

Perhaps I could be tester, or help finding bugs, etc., until I learnt more opengl and other programming technics.

Sincerely yours,
Andreas Kirsch

Also observe the cute mistakes - which I'm still making today, too >_>

But anyway, there were forty applicants and only three 'who survived the "look at the code and try to implement one of the features on the TODO list" test, out of 40+ applicants?' (LordHavoc in IRC). Two of them got jobs in the game industry shortly afterwards, so I was the only one left out of 40 applicants!

Well guys (the 37 of them), you clearly suck, because you didn't even try. I have tried and although LordHavoc pretty much dismissed all of my changes as useless or not committable, I still got onto the team and I honestly have never regretted it.

So always: try your best, even if it looks as if you're failing, because you're not the only one and your attempt already is a success compared to simply giving-up up-front!

Now enough of that, enjoy your weekend!
Greetings,
Black

PS: Always a nice read - http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/08/24/smart-people-are-dumb-failure-is-awesome/