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Ask HN: What do you do?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#11

Post by jmsbrwr »

agibsonccc wrote: post #9
jmsbrwr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you pick your specialty? I've toyed with the idea of freelancing, but I have no idea what my niche would be. I don't have any professional experience, so I suppose that makes the decision a bit more difficult, but only because it adds so many options.

You'll laugh at the story. 2nd year of college I created a spider for the first time and loved the idea of a computer being autonomous. Took some classes, took it up as a hobby and it became a profession. Other than that, I asked a lot of questions, read papers in different areas to find what was interesting. (Not necessarily understanding ALL of the math behind it immediately, but enough to get an overview of what t…

You'll laugh at home close to home you hit.

I am just finishing up an HTML5 anonymous IRC client that I originally planned on using Socket.io for. I decided to use Firebase in the end.

Also, I think the Oculus Rift is one of the coolest inventions I've seen in a long time because it takes an industry that has a pretty consistent history (video games) and turned it on it's head. Oculus VR is taking what most people believe to be science fiction and making it a reality. I have a lot of respect for those guys. (And I might have sent them a job application last week. ;)) Computer vision/graphics is an interesting field that thrives because of the type of math I enjoy: linear algebra.

My training is also in web development, but the high tech side of things is where I want to end up.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#12

Post by mindcrime »

I basically have two jobs:

1. I work part-time as a consultant for a company in Durham, NC named Open Software Integrators. There I do things ranging from working on greenfield, custom-code-from-scratch projects, to architectural consulting, to training, to performance tuning, to writing articles and blog posts, to mentoring / training junior employees. As a company, we focus on open source enterprise engagements, mainly focused around the open source Java ecosystem: JBoss, Tomcat, Activiti, Hadoop, and other technologies of that general nature.

2. I am one of two founders of an Open Source Enterprise Software startup called Fogbeam Labs. We develop OSS products for the enterprise, with a focus on tools that foster the application of collective intelligence, and support better and faster collaboration, problem solving, decision making and knowledge transfer. The product we are most focused on right now is an Enterprise Social Network named Quoddy. Quoddy brings together aspects of Social Networking, BPM, Machine Learning. and the Semantic Web to that end. Over time we plan to offer products in several areas, including Enterprise Search, BPM, "Big Data", Business Intelligence / analytics, SOA / integration, etc., where everything fits into our vision of IT as a means to enhance the collective intelligence of the organization.

As the original founder, and one of only three people working on the project (counting an intern) I do a bit of everything: writing code, developing product vision, writing marketing copy for the website, sales, customer development, strategy, market research, you name it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#14

Post by AndrewLuke »

davyjones wrote: post #7

I work for a supermarket in Japan...doing some IT grunt work + db admin + CRUD apps. Itching to try out new things...preferably remote. Trying to get pgxplorer.com off the ground as a side project to "vacation" profitability.

I was actually looking for something like that today. Looks very good. Will try it out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#15

Post by dome82 »

I am a programmer in Norway for a company making a digital asset management software. It is very interesting and challenging. Before that, I was a coder in both healthcare and e-learning.

I love what I do every day!

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#16

Post by davyjones »

AndrewLuke wrote: post #14
davyjones wrote: post #7

I work for a supermarket in Japan...doing some IT grunt work + db admin + CRUD apps. Itching to try out new things...preferably remote. Trying to get pgxplorer.com off the ground as a side project to "vacation" profitability.

I was actually looking for something like that today. Looks very good. Will try it out.

I shall be adding some killer features tonight (JST): grouping, windowing AND pivoting from inside Tables with a couple of clicks on average.

Please raise issues and let me know if you face anything. Glad to iron it out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#17

Post by japhyr »

I'm a high school math and science teacher, in a small alternative school. I teach an intro programming class each year, which I am slowly starting to integrate into core classes.

I also want to apply what I know to long-standing problems in education. I want to bring core concepts of programming workflow, such as forking, into education. I am currently working on a project called Open Competencies, which allows:

- schools to develop and maintain their own bodies of learning standards;

- new schools to fork another school's competency system, in a matter of minutes;

- schools to define different "pathways" through the curriculum.

Demo project: http://opencompetencies.herokuapp.com

Code: http://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies

Re: Ask HN: What do you do?

#19

Post by meadhikari »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

transitioning from coding to running a business of coding. Have never done anything as cool as every other commenter here - wondering what I have done with my life :-)

>>>transitioning from coding to running a business of coding.

You understand many people dream of what you are doing right?

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