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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
DIR Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code?
_DeadFred_ wrote 5 min ago:
Worked in a trash recycling plant when I was living in the halfway
house. It was interesting from a exploring life standpoint but mainly
horrific in every way possible. There were a group of immigrants from
africa working there. They pooled their resources until they could get
a car to do uber driving, then leveraged more from there. Was cool to
see them succeeding and helping each other. They were good people. But
mainly awful americans that were playing out the bottom of addiction or
kids out of high school that had built zero skills and had older addict
siblings working at the plant that convinced them to work there
(because the sibling got a bonus for recruiting them). Lots of midlife
alcoholics who recently dropped off the 'functional' alcoholic level
(spinout normally started from getting a DUI and therefor losing their
middle class job and ability to drive a car and spiraling fast from
there once they realized there was no way back to middle class for them
and their alcohol damaged body couldn't handle the physical work).
Before that I was IT management. Before that software
development/implementation/fixer as I could troubleshoot things top to
bottom, from network to code to poor SQL queries and I had good people
skills and presented as confident surfer/jock.
I've been trying to do my own startup but it looks like times run out
for that so not sure what I'll do. Maybe focus on less interesting but
quicker/lower income but higher chance of success ideas. At one point I
had a pretty good sideline of those that worked out but that was when
SEO worked so who knows? I own my house/vehicles so my life costs are
pretty low but I'm starting to miss nice restaurants/fancy food and
fashion switching to baggy I won't be able to still play upscale (I
have a closet of nice clothes but they will now tell on me because
they're getting too dated) plus at some point house maintenance (roof,
etc) will get me and I'll have to sell.
why-o-why wrote 37 min ago:
Private chef here.
biomcgary wrote 50 min ago:
Computational biologist with a focus on predicting individual human
health at a startup, but I have ended up managing software engineers.
(Scientist explore and engineers make the science work in production.)
sshine wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
Iâm a CS teacher these days, but my previous 4 jobs:
- Kubernetes consulting
- On-prem CI for hardware-in-the-loop for radio transceiver firmware
using NixOS
- Firmware for high-power EV chargers in Rust
- Zero-knowledge cryptography for a blockchain
Before that I was a full-stack web developer with all kinds of tech
stacks. Next year Iâm going back to being a full-stack web developer.
cenullum wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
I'm making a game for steam by using godot engine. Its 2d and there
many mods in it and also users can make their own mods with lua script.
Froedlich wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
I'm mostly retired now, and my paying work involves maintenance on
proprietary inventory and billing software written in a 1960s language
in a dialect that became unsupported in the mid-1980s. And it runs in
MS-DOS.
I've mostly set aside the languages and tools I used to use, and I'm
learning Haiku's variant of C++ to write some native-mode Haiku
application software.
ex-aws-dude wrote 29 min ago:
Are you able to compile it on a modern computer or do you have to
work on it in MS-DOS?
simgt wrote 55 min ago:
Holy fuck. What can possibly require maintenance on software this
old? Industrial metalworking machines maybe?
contingencies wrote 26 min ago:
Industrial metalworking machines can typically be upgraded to
modern controllers fairly easily.
justsomehnguy wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Heh, [1] But yes, while there is a heavy skew to the web tech., there
are enough of people who do the things.
Currently I'm roped to my old hat of a typical SMB sysadmin and.. there
are not fun 5hings for the profession.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007814
kahlonel wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
Embedded software developer here, with very minimal professional
hardware design experience. I mostly write nostdlib C, and never use
malloc. I write peripheral drivers from scratch even if thereâs an
âSDKâ for it. I spend almost 40% of my time reading documentation,
30% scribbling state machines, 15% writing code and 15% testing it on
hardware. LLMs donât help me much. I use them to write scripts for me
to parse my stdout and find patterns. For breakfast, I fight EEs to
prove their hardware doesnât work. I have exploded hardware setups
for the products Iâm developing for on my desk. JLink is the favorite
thing in my aresenal. Even the slightest latency on my text editor
annoys the shit out of me, which is why I donât use IDEs.
vednig wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
If you're a programmer you can always become a founder, I'm in process
of building my own Payment Platform because I wasn't satisfied with the
existing solutions.
Now I'm doing legal stuff, management and fintech plus web apps
servers. Cheers.
mysterydip wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
I work on microcontroller (parallax propeller 2) programs during the
day and make games in dragonruby at night.
thomasjb wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
Working in silicon design, Verilog and SystemVerilog are the bulk of
the work, but a lot of scripting of EDA tools too. I enjoy it, I think
it's very different working on something which has to be complete when
you're done versus something that can be updated easily.
vishalontheline wrote 2 hours 24 min ago:
I'm working on a YouTube channel to showcase life and surfing in North
San Diego County.
You can check it out here:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/@soncsd
abnercoimbre wrote 2 hours 24 min ago:
A next-gen [0] terminal emulator. It's in Early Access, but watch the
3-minute landing trailer for the gist of the vision.
The difficult "grunt work" is in keeping the native binary small (~5MB
or less) and working on Windows, Mac and Linux at feature-parity.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://terminal.click
stack_framer wrote 22 min ago:
The landing trailer won't play on my Android phone in Brave. The play
button flickers to a pause button, then immediately back to a play
button.
dabockster wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
Still sort of web stuff, but not the kind that HN usually does:
I'm trying to get back into computer networking - both physical cables
and the computer code sides of things. Over the past 5 years beginning
in the covid lockdowns, I've been watching a lot of the application
layer stuff that was written over the past 10-15 years (the stuff HN
usually does) slowly blow up. Usually because some REST API or
something either broke or got depreciated somehow. This has been
affecting both cloud and desktop apps I use, and has made me see the
real value in refreshing my lower level network knowledge.
Heck, I'm honestly thinking about getting a CCNA now (or some other
non-degree universal cert).
hatradiowigwam wrote 2 hours 41 min ago:
I build ETL pipelines and all kinds of ad-hoc data processing software.
These range from python projects to thousand-line shell scripts. The
jobs run on machines above >1000 CPU core counts - what you would
consider a mainframe or big iron.
Web stuff will burn you out. In my case, that happened 10+ years ago
and I've never desired to go back [to building web products].
psych_ wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
I was hired for full-stack development, but ended up getting moved to a
different team working on a desktop application in C++/C#. I've ended
up preferring the desktop work a bit more. The problems I have to solve
tend to feel more interesting, though that could just be a product of
the environment I'm in and the app we're making.
Seeing a lot of people here who work in embedded. Would definitely be
interested in diving into that world a bit more. Seems like a lot of
fun being that close to the hardware.
HeyLaughingBoy wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
90% of the programming I've done over my 30+ year career has been for
various flavors of embedded systems. Mainly Medical Devices for the
last 20 years. Although there was an interesting detour into Group
Fitness (managing data from connected gym equipment) for a few years.
They varied in complexity from little 8-bit microcontrollers to 64-bit
server-class blade PC's orchestrating dozens of smaller controllers
over serial networks. Written a lot of C++ to the point where I'm just
about sick of it.
I've also done the odd webapp, desktop or mobile app from time to time
(C# is fun!), but it's been mostly embedded stuff paying my bills.
sosodev wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
I'm something of a data scientist for a community college. Most of the
problems are social not technical but I am still writing code often
enough.
dqh wrote 3 hours 2 min ago:
I work on the software stack for a biological computing platform
(think: tool for programming with human neurons in a dish).
Coding work spans FPGA (SystemVerilog), Linux kernel C, userspace C,
Python, and yes, some web services and Browser JavaScript also. I also
work on the network engineering of the cloud service and on the Linux
OS image.
Easily the most fun Iâve had as a developer and Iâve worked on lots
of different types of commercial software projects before. Not all the
world is web apps, embedded work can be very satisfying if youâve not
considered it.
SAI_Peregrinus wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
Embedded developer here, automotive-related. C, some Python for tests,
some shell scripts, CMake, etc. for CI. Review of hardware schematics,
reading datasheets, reading various standards documents (USB, various
SAE standards, various ISO standards, etc.) is required. Firmware
updates take weeks of testing, even though the unit tests run in
seconds they can't catch most errors the system can encounter in
practice, and simulator tests don't catch things like increased
temperature raising power consumption without an expensive thermal
chamber. Factory production sets hard deadlines on quite a few things.
All together, that means it's a more deliberate, slower release cycle.
Rietty wrote 3 hours 7 min ago:
Working in a Data Engineering/Operations role which focuses heavily on
financial datasets. Everything is within AWS and Snowflake and each
table can easily have >100M records of any type of random data (there
is a lot of breadth.) General day to day is creating jobs that will
process large amounts of input data and storing them into Snowflake,
sending out tons of automated reports and emails to decision makers as
well as gathering more data from the web.
All of this is done in a Python environment with usage of Rust for
speeding up critical code/computations. (The rust code is delivered as
Python modules.)
The work is interesting and different challenges arise when having to
process and compute datasets that are updated with 10s of TBs of fresh
data daily.
jftuga wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
> General day to day is creating jobs that will process large amounts
of input data and storing them into Snowflake
About how long do these typically take to execute? Minute, Tens of
Minutes, Hours?
My work if very iterative where the feedback loop is only a few
minutes long.
femto wrote 3 hours 10 min ago:
Electrical engineering and science qualifications. Work on signal
processing (FPGA/DSP/CPU), Radio hardware and firmware for
WiFi/LMR/LTE. IC design. Radar systems. Counter-drone systems.
The work can be interesting, but intense when in the thick of building
a system. There is less competition for jobs compared to pure
web/programming, but also less jobs in total. The option is always
there to take a web/programming gig if the specialised work is hard to
get. Potentially pay is lower than some of the big US web companies,
but that's probably as much from me not chasing dollars to the
exclusion of all else. Some people/companies don't see this work as
deserving of the same/better compensation as web/programming, as it is
not as easy to understand and they won't pay for what they don't
understand. Find the right employer/client and it can be lucrative.
merelysounds wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
I suppose two other major categories would be mobile apps and gaming.
Some overlap is possible too, e.g. mobile apps would use some web tech,
or gaming might often be mobile gaming.
ACS_Solver wrote 3 hours 23 min ago:
I have minimal experience with modern Web tech, though I used to run a
couple websites in the old days.
My main job currently is in game dev, writing C#. Working for a small
studio with flexible roles, I sometimes also take the opportunity to
use other tech, like actual web stuff. A couple years ago I wrote a
simple HTTP API for some internal needs and that was the first time I
did modern web.
I've worked in the embedded space and adjacent. I've done automotive
(Autosar), I've done some bare metal applications and I've maintained a
custom Linux system for a series of embedded products. I've also worked
on tooling (native desktop applications) related to some of these
embedded uses.
For fun I still play with some embedded development, and would like to
do another Android app. I built a couple simple ones years ago and
generally Android development seems pretty pleasant to me, but I
haven't done Android side projects in a long time because I can't
really think of any apps I'd actually like to have.
jakeinspace wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
Embedded, a mix of Linux (yocto), boot loaders (mostly C), some bare
metal C/assembly. Have worked in aerospace for 6 years but am currently
looking to hop over to another industry, ideally AI
accelerators/semiconductors or medical devices. I enjoy it, for the
most part.
dijit wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
I make video games, does that count as something else?
delta_p_delta_x wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
Side project(s): Grokking Windows development from the top of the stack
to the kernel; everything from Win32, WinUI, WPF, COM, to user- and
kernel-mode driver development. It's fun to write drivers in modern
C++. Also, massively procrastinated, Vulkan/D3D12 cross-platform game
engine written in C++23/26, work-in-progress.
Full time work: GPU driver development and integration for a smartphone
series. It's fun to see how the sauce is made.
Eventually: hope to pick up Rust.
bobnarizes wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
Side project: A native macOS app in Swift that runs locally and uses AI
to clean and organize files by moving them into the best-matching
folders. No backend or accounts. [1] Full-time: C++ work on nearby
connectivity (bluetooth) for embedded / industrial devices (factory
equipment). Deep stack, hardware constraints, long lifecycles, high
reliability.
Non-web work feels very different: stronger constraints, slower but
deliberate releases, and bugs are much more expensive. Thereâs a lot
of interesting software being built far away from HTTP and browsers.
HTML [1]: https://floxtop.com
cpursley wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
That's neat, using Apple Foundation Models or something else? I'm
very curious about how it's determining folder matches (I need to do
something for images that are already classified/tagged via FastVLM)
in iOS.
bobnarizes wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
Not Apple Foundation Models â unfortunately theyâre not capable
enough (yet) for understanding content and matching it to folders.
Iâm using SBERT-style embedding models for the semantic matching,
which works very well in practice.
For non-text content, the app also analyzes images (OCR + object
recognition) using Appleâs Vision framework. That part is
surprisingly powerful, especially on Apple Silicon.
> I need to do something for images that are already
classified/tagged via FastVLM
Whatâs the concrete use case youâre targeting with this?
cpursley wrote 3 hours 2 min ago:
Classifying real estate / property images. Also using Apple
Vision which ain't half-bad for something on device and feeding
that metadata along with what FastVLM returns into Foundation
model to turn into structured output - trying to see how far a I
can push that. But feels pretty limited/dated in term of
capabilities vs lead edge models.
bobnarizes wrote 2 hours 53 min ago:
Iâve seen a huge advantage in running everything fully local
and private. Not sure if that fits your use case, though.
Nearly 90% of Floxtop users choose the app mainly for that
privacy focus.
neutronicus wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
I work on a CAD package for Architects. In C++. It is a native Windows
/ macOS application.
It's a giant pile of legacy code so a lot of what I do is just C++
generalist stuff, but I have a strong math background so if that's ever
called for it's me doing that work (especially because I have
English-language skills that don't often come with the strong math
background at this pay scale). In particular, I'm the guy wrangling
Parasolid (geometry kernel used by SolidWorks, for those familiar) to
produce geometry for walls and floors.
pedalpete wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
Neurotech, so a combination of hardware, software, and science.
Though the end-use isn't web, we can't deny that much of development
still goes to building web-services and consumer app.
unkeptbarista wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Doing embedded development using C. Thoroughly enjoy it.
I was once in a group that was switched away from the work we were
doing and repurposed to do web work. It was a bad experience, but not
because it was web work. The code base we were given was in terrible
shape and we weren't allowed the time to adequately fix issues.
Thankfully I no longer work there.
stack_framer wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
I have worked exclusively on web apps for my entire career (~17
years), but something is pulling me toward C development. I have no
idea how to really get started though. I'm doing a little hobby
project, but I'm not sure where to channel my study/effort to become
good enough for a career change. I picked up the second edition of
The C Programming Language by Kernighan/Ritchie, but I assume it's
outdated by now. Any advice?
unkeptbarista wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
I'm not sure I'm the best person for advice on this matter, or
maybe it is great advice for some. I took a leap, believed in
myself, and it worked out okay.
I'm self taught when it comes to computers and software
development. For years before I landed a paying development job I
did a lot of hobby projects. When I decided to take the leap and
landed my first development job I took a fairly steep cut in pay. I
was single, could afford the cut and was doing something I really
wanted to do. It got the experience I needed and after the first
year and changing jobs, my pay substantially increased.
I realize not everyone can take the approach I took. It may not
even work these days. I did this 38 years ago when the industry was
a bit more accepting of developers without a college degree.
Addendum: I also networked. I went to the equivalent of meet ups of
the day. Talked with other developers, showed them my work, etc.
This is how I found my first job.
dabockster wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
Start by writing a few basic hello world style programs while
focusing on the "C way of doing things" - most importantly how you
manage memory in C. That's probably the biggest pitfall I see
people coming from higher level programming trip up on. Study how
objects work, different forms of math, etc. And that's all console
code btw - don't move onto GUIs until your console knowledge is
solid. GUIs are a whole different beast in C/C++ (and are a big
reason why frameworks like Electron were built).
LLMs can also help you break into C development by a large degree.
But they still get overwhelmed on a sufficiently large C codebase
just like any other language. Your mileage may vary there.
krnlclnl wrote 3 hours 1 min ago:
Got my start with C via Linux kernel hacking in the 90s. It's
practical so that's where I would recommend. (or a BSD kernel which
are often better organized).
With ~17 years of experience already, start with the study of the
structure of C programs. Recreate some of it manually, build it,
and research the things that do not behave as expected.
Bonus of using an open source kernel is they have a lot of eyeballs
on them. They will be pretty dialed in versus studying random
Github projects that happen to be written in C.
Would recommend avoiding cognitive overload, wait until you get
into comfortable flow writing, building, fixing as needed, simple
programs before you dive into lower level debugging, trying to
grasp assembly structures that a compiler spits out.
dabockster wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Honestly, they shouldn't even need to touch a debugger if they're
able to reasonably manage their memory "well enough". Like in
general. I'd only touch a debugger myself if I knew I was dealing
with a memory problem.
contingencies wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
I am working on fundraising and administration for a robotics venture.
Very little work goes on engineering subjects at present, more often
things like patent law, corporate administration, strategy, network
build-out and the present penultimate goal fundraising for an
aggressive scale go to market autonomous factory. However, the prior
eight years have given me an amazing opportunity to study all manner of
engineering subjects from mechanical to structural, electronic to
electrical, production and fabrication through operations research,
logistics and supply chain. I now have a very 'grass roots' view of
venture administration, cross-disciplinary R&D and commercialization
that is globally informed and very difficult to gain in any context.
While significant yield remains at this stage speculative, nevertheless
it is very interesting!
al_borland wrote 3 hours 48 min ago:
I do infrastructure automation, so other people can run web stuff (and
some other things).
bityard wrote 3 hours 37 min ago:
I've done some of this but would like to do more. Are you hiring?
p1esk wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
Iâm an ML researcher currently working on model compression for AI
hardware accelerators. Mostly developing and testing quantization
algorithms, and hw/sw codesign.
doublerabbit wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
IT Architect.
Currently rebuilding a VFX studio replacing Windows with Linux with a
bespoke PXE system and then implementing a Data Vault to secure IP we
receive from movie studios.
fogleman wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
I work on 3D printing algorithms at Formlabs. Lots of computational
geometry.
maxmoehl wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
I am working on the bare metal automation of IronCore. The project
provides tooling to automate the management of data-center hardware and
a an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering on top of that. [1]
Previously I was working on the ingress components of Cloud Foundry, a
Platform-as-a-Service offering.
HTML [1]: https://ironcore.dev/
HTML [2]: https://www.cloudfoundry.org/
carstenhag wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
I developed Android apps for an EV charging platform for 5 years. Now
working for Mapbox to integrate a navigation app into cars. Quite
complex environment. Most Android topics are exactly the same as on a
phone, itâs quite fun though because your app can control car
functionality
(Germany/Munich)
culebron21 wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
I was a web developer until 9 years ago. It was Django & jQuery, but
React came with factories of abstract factories, and I happily quit for
geospatial development and analysis.
Earlier it was geodata imports from OSM or private sources. Now it's
mostly routers and GPS tracks. Interfacing with OSRM & Valhalla via C
bindings. Road graph analysis and algorithms. I wrote a router myself,
comparing different routing algorithms. I also developed a pedestrian
traffic model for entire cities, for retail. I also did various ML
models. My languages are Python w/ GeoPandas & CatBoost, Rust, Go.
RealityVoid wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Embedded SW here, mostly automotive. Consulting and trying to make Rust
a thing in the field.
burnte wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
I'm in healthcare IT management, infrastructure, policy, new projects,
all the stuff that comes down from the top, except I have a strong
technical background, rather than just being a business guy. I started
in PC repair 30+ years ago and have always been a hardware guy. I can
do a little coding, but I'm the guy that creates the platforms coders
work on.
clbrmbr wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
Embedded systems / IoT / Smart Home. Lots of C. Thereâs still backend
and mobile but thereâs a LOT of C and firmware at the core.
allknowingfrog wrote 3 hours 15 min ago:
Are you seeing anything interesting happening in this space with Zig?
I've been dabbling a bit (after seeing so much about it on HN), but
TigerBeetle is the only successful project I can name. I know a few
embedded developers, and they all seem pretty content with C.
clbrmbr wrote 1 hour 11 min ago:
I wish I were more connected to the rest of industry. Most deep
embedded (ESP32/stm32 and smaller) is still in C. Thereâs some
Rust going on (Aura Ring for example).
Once you get up to embedded Linux basically any language can be
used.
I have a really smart colleague who is interested in Zig but Iâm
hesitant to make such an investment without (1) the stronger
guarantees of Rust and (2) the larger embedded dev community around
Rust.
At the end of the day we donât usually write our own peripheral
drivers anymore, so itâs important to have good BSP support for
your language. So whatever you use, you usually have to wrap the C.
This is even true of using C! The vendors libs are usually pretty
bad and need wrapping with safety checks, or to be made so you can
run more than one instance, etc.
cbcam wrote 6 hours 20 min ago:
I work in RF comms. Most of my work is in network simulation from the
transport layer all the way down to the physical layer to prove out
radio performance before expensive flight testing. I also work on
error correction schemes as the networks I develop may be lossy
compared to the internet at large.
I used to work in web dev, but I enjoy my current work a lot more.
Most of my web role was just taking mockups from the UX team and
translating them into code which felt mindless. Now I get handed a
system and am asked to squeeze as much performance out of it as
possible which I find much more interesting.
AnimalMuppet wrote 8 hours 37 min ago:
I work on embedded systems. C++, or C back in the old days. 2 years
were in Pascal.
nmaleki wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
I am currently working on a desktop application for 3D spreadsheets.
The first version of the code looks like this, [1] The new version is
much more feature rich, catering towards the user. Unreal use in Python
is now native and users can launch a dedicated server.
The development process can be slow, lots of waiting on compiling and
cooking. The Python part of this project is great. Code is very simple
and readable and I'm building out a renderer for the geometric algebra
package I'm using, Kingdon. This lets users quickly visualize 3D
elements, lines, points, planes, and shapes. Working on non-web stuff
is great. I love building out UI and text in 3D, it feels like the
final form of UI and is a lot more expressive than web UI. Controlling
objects in 3D let's you do a lot more. Everything feels right.
HTML [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rJuRTZOE99g
ex-aws-dude wrote 36 min ago:
Woah that is cool, its like the mother of all demos that video
kevinherron wrote 1 day ago:
I work on industrial automation software (SCADA/HMI, MES, PLC comms
protocols, etc.).
dranudin wrote 3 hours 11 min ago:
Me too :). Mostly engineering systems for programming Edge Devices
used in factory automation. The user usually runs windows, the edge
device linux.
ex-aws-dude wrote 1 day ago:
What kind of hardware/OS are you usually writing code for?
kevinherron wrote 1 day ago:
We write mostly Java, some Kotlin, targeting the JVM.
Most commonly our software runs on premises on server-class
hardware (or what passes for server-class depending on the
industry...), sometimes hosted in the cloud, sometimes on "edge"
hardware (think Raspberry Pi class power/spec wise).
One component of the software actually is a web frontend (and a
Jetty backend) to go with it, but it's not your typical "web-app"
and it's not SaaS. But there's much more to it than that.
binsquare wrote 1 day ago:
I am not working on web or server stuff.
I'm building a better primitive for infrastructure via microvm's (think
virtual machine but fast and easy to use).
I am about to launch a complete rewrite of this:
HTML [1]: https://github.com/BinSquare/ERA
codingdave wrote 1 day ago:
I did do web work for a long time, but I grew tired of it, so these
days I just do contract work on legacy systems and platform
modernizations. Some of those systems may have a web UX, some do not.
But the work is more about refactoring architectures to get off brittle
tech that nobody knows anymore, and move on to tech stacks where you
can actually find talent to run it.
It is a different experience to be sure - I work on stuff that nobody
likes and where most people are surprised it still exists. And my goals
tend to be about shutting down, not growing. I succeed with every
server we kill, every product we turn off, every customer we get rid
of.
tyfighter wrote 1 day ago:
I haven't made a website of any kind since a C&C: Red Alert fan site
somewhere on GeoCities in the late 90s.
I work on graphics drivers. They're hard write and even harder to
debug. You have to be a huge nerd about graphics to get very far. It's
a relatively rare skill set, but new, younger, nerdier people keep on
coming. Most people in graphics are quiet and are just keeping the
industry functioning (me). It's applied computer architecture in a
combination of continuous learning and intuition from experience.
d-lisp wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
I wish I was doing your job. How do I do so ?
ex-aws-dude wrote 1 day ago:
That is interesting, do you ever find bugs in the hardware itself?
Is there some big spec document or ISA that you follow when
implementing the driver?
Also I'm curious is it easier to write a driver for the modern "lower
level" APIs like vulkan/dx12?
tyfighter wrote 1 day ago:
Hardware bugs can be found during chip bring-up within the first
couple of months back from the fab, but since I've worked in this
area I've never actually seen a bug that couldn't be worked around.
They happen, but they're rare and I've never experienced a chip
needing a respin because of a bug.
There is documentation, but it's not as well organized as you might
imagine. Documentation is usually only necessary when implementing
new features, and the resulting code doesn't change often. There
are also multiple instruction sets as there are a bunch of little
processors you need to control.
Vulkan/DX12 aren't really "low-level" APIs. They're "low overhead",
and honestly, no. Their code base is just as large and complicated,
if not more so, than OpenGL/DX11.
skvmb wrote 1 day ago:
I build audio software engines mostly. This is highly enjoyable to me,
because I get to create new sounds and new audio effects with results
being near instant. Upgrading old Amiga ProTracker .MOD file playback
to not sound so 8-bit and low samplerate is a fun challenge too.
Compressing Lamport Signatures is a side-project of mine too.
runtimepanic wrote 1 day ago:
I donât work on web apps at all. Most of my time goes into security
tooling and analysis pipelines.
A lot of it is closer to systems work than application development:
parsing large datasets, automating analysis, dealing with flaky inputs,
and building things that are mostly run headless.
The feedback loop is slower than web work, but the problems tend to be
deeper and longer-lived. You spend less time on UX and more time
thinking about correctness, edge cases, and failure modes.
I suspect there are many people here doing similar non-web work, itâs
just less visible because thereâs no UI to screenshot or product to
demo.
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