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Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

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11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

#11
If you really want to stretch your mind, consider learning Verilog. Writing code that takes exactly ZERO* time to execute, and all works in parallel, is strange at first.

I got my first FPGA board from Amazon for $27 (a Tang Nano 9k), and use YoSys to program it (open source for the win!)

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* Actually, all of the code in a block executes at the same time, real world chips have delays, of course.

Re: Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

#15
These are things I have dabbled in using only web dev skills. The first is my favorite:

* A/B testing

* test automation

* API management and proxies

* transmission protocol authoring, and client applications

* streaming media distribution

* media/game/file server application

Re: Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

#16

If you really want to stretch your mind, consider learning Verilog. Writing code that takes exactly ZERO* time to execute, and all works in parallel, is strange at first. I got my first FPGA board from Amazon for $27 (a Tang Nano 9k), and use YoSys to program it (open source for the win!) --- * Actually, all of the code in a block executes at the same time, real world chips have delays, of course.

What can you make with that?

Re: Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

#18

If you really want to stretch your mind, consider learning Verilog. Writing code that takes exactly ZERO* time to execute, and all works in parallel, is strange at first. I got my first FPGA board from Amazon for $27 (a Tang Nano 9k), and use YoSys to program it (open source for the win!) --- * Actually, all of the code in a block executes at the same time, real world chips have delays, of course.

What can you make with that?

It's a hardware description language. We used VHDL (not Verilog, but equivalent) for some custom processing in a radio, sped things up versus running in software or with a DSP (at the time, DSPs today may be able to replace good chunks of what was in VHDL running on an FPGA in that project).

Re: Ask HN: What's an interesting software development niche?

#20
post #13

Hacking the firmware in consumer DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I've been there for 3 years so far.

To do what? Also how did you get started in that?

see magiclantern.fm and fujihack.org. it's mostly a hobby project.
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