code analysis and transformation tools. I love working with code as data; there's something magical about being able to do deeper things with the code than the actual language interpreter or compiler typically does.
Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
101–110 of 112 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#102Scrapers! I love scraping stuff, beating the anti-scrapers, finding the simplest way to scrape a page (with HTTP requests, I very rarely use headless browsers or browser automation), cleaning up the data, building something around it…
Weirdly I find it very relaxing.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I should write this stuff up, but I haven't. I do have some brief notes on the "Notes.app" format here: https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils/blob/master/notes.... But I didn't discuss my methodology -- Generic decoding of protobuf, building up a schema as you go -- the tricky part there is that a byte array and a substructure look the same, so you have to try to decode it, and if successful, try that schema on t…
For lucene / sqlite, I used the docs on the web site. SQLite got me a little experience with b-trees (as did couch), and I got to write a little query planner. Lucene was interesting because it was compact, had some skip lists for fast lookup, and was a log-structured merge tree. I borrowed bits of it for an index in a binary file format for work. For realmdb / couchdb, I looked at the source code. I did realm so I c…
Re keychain, you're probably aware of it, but https://github.com/ptoomey3/Keychain-Dumper/ is very thorough in extracting keychain data (including data that one would expect to no longer be in there).
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not my area at all, but reverse-engineering file formats sounds really interesting. Do you have a blog by any chance?
I should write this stuff up, but I haven't. I do have some brief notes on the "Notes.app" format here: https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils/blob/master/notes.... But I didn't discuss my methodology -- Generic decoding of protobuf, building up a schema as you go -- the tricky part there is that a byte array and a substructure look the same, so you have to try to decode it, and if successful, try that schema on t…
Thanks for the notes on Notes!
As I said, it's way out of my wheelhouse, but I'm planning on spending some time in the next months on trying to merge a decrypted backup of old iOS Signal chat history into the decrypted backup of current Android chat history and trying to restore from that (re-encrypted) backup (there is no native iOS to Android transfer on Signal yet), so I'm starting to look into any learning material that will allow me to not fail within the first 2 minutes of trying :).
Definitely do start writing this stuff up!
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#105I struggle on finding a niche. Happy that other people found theirs
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m really glad to hear this. Building hardware for the real world amplified the power of software incredibly. PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life.
> PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life. Who is "we"? Your profile doesn't say.
Whoops! Fixed it!
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m really glad to hear this. Building hardware for the real world amplified the power of software incredibly. PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life.
Would be glad to apply.. ;-)
Just updated my profile, check out the link there.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to buy that robosexual colleague of yours a beer. Maybe he could seduce my apartment's AC into actually working in the summer?
> he Gotcha!
He was an heterosexual male, he thought the brush hairs felt like female pubic hair. Despite that, he was a cool guy in other contexts.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#109What's socket/tcp type programming? Is that a whole genre of software development - I mean a specialization in itself?
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#110Tinkering with microcontrollers is probably the most satisfying, because it really challenges you to understand exactly what is going on at all times, right down to the electrical level. Developing for retro hardware can be fun too, for similar reasons.
Any advice on best way to get started?