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Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
141–150 of 195 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#142I'm mostly an office worker and make crafts at home that I sell online - most boring daytime endeavour yet. I too am a "wantrepreneur" and I'm thinking of getting something started soon. Nothing "tech" though.
From the community, I get a surprising amount of non-tech/hacker news, stories and comments and new insights about life and work that I didn't imagine otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#143I'm an applications engineer working in the semiconductor robotics industry. I make robots run faster and more reliable so that more chips can be made. The software I maintain touches >70% of semiconductor products in the world, and that's only a guess based on our market penetration into a single (significantly) necessary step in the semiconductor manufacturing process. I would also classify myself as a wantrepreneu…
ASML?
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#144I'm a math prof, my research is in applied & computational math, mainly dynamical systems and numerical methods. I do a fair bit of coding in my work (and studied CS/AI as an undergrad before getting PhD in math), and am interested in many of the topics that get posted here -- programming languages, technology & society, advances in the sciences, etc. I also have many friends in the software industry, and have a passing interest in startup culture.
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#145I'm a consulting actuary. What am I doing here? I've been programming since I was 11 and still do it often. You have to as an actuary. Besides I have some web skills and I'm using to build a startup doing risk management for farmers. In this startup I'm responsible for the whole stack.
What does an actuary do? And what programming do you do?
What an actuary does depends, other replies indicate that actuaries don't do as much programming as I thought they did. However, I do a lot. At the moment I'm mainly responsible for building a large cash flow model (40k lines of VBA).
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#146I'm a consulting actuary. What am I doing here? I've been programming since I was 11 and still do it often. You have to as an actuary. Besides I have some web skills and I'm using to build a startup doing risk management for farmers. In this startup I'm responsible for the whole stack.
Also an actuary. Consulted at one time but work at a company now. I started programming around the same age and also use it for work. We all do SQL but I am the only one doing general purpose coding at my company. Also have web skills (the coincidences just keep coming). I do a few things on the side and am contemplating a bootstrapped startup soonish. For example, I did everything but the logo on this site: http://t…
May I ask how big your company is? I'm quite surprised to hear you're the only one that codes. In our risk modeling of 15, 10 code daily.
If I understand correctly tvsift shows were you can find streaming services for a particular Tv-series, am I right?
Looks well done, I like the filter. Unfortunately for me the links below the series are not working for me on iPad (latest iOS).
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#147I am a pharmacist living in a small town of 35-40k people in Northern Greece and my ruby code, which I try to put together in my spare time, is kinda silly :-) do I need to say more? :-p For me HN is a view in the dream-land of the cool kids :-) I love it! Also the most high-quality discussions/views I read on tech or even politics often come from HN.
Haha. Fancy seeing your post again :)
Same here hehehehe :-)
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also an actuary. Consulted at one time but work at a company now. I started programming around the same age and also use it for work. We all do SQL but I am the only one doing general purpose coding at my company. Also have web skills (the coincidences just keep coming). I do a few things on the side and am contemplating a bootstrapped startup soonish. For example, I did everything but the logo on this site: http://t…
I'm an actuary as well! I would dispute GP that "as an actuary you have to program". The overwhelming majority of actuaries I know barely know how to use VBA. I quit chasing a career in Comp Sci at uni (I started programming at a very young age, and always wanted to be a software engineer) to switch to actuarial science, but now, even though I'm a Fellow, I've quit my job to go into entrepreneurship. I think that bei…
I can't argue with your experiences and I guess I have been living in a bubble. With all the legacy data we have (the company started using IT in the 60s and the coverages are until the end of life... AS/400 is still in active use) data munging is a task in itself.
I fully agree with your last sentence! May I ask what you're working on?
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#149I'm an recent high school graduate. I come here because, despite high test scores, I don't know what I want to do with my life, and I feel like being here might help me.
What do you like? What was the most exciting thing you did in the last two years?
Hmm. I have a hard time naming specifics. I enjoy math when I understand it, but I have the hardest time in Calculus of any of my classes. I was near the best in my class in Biology and Chemistry but I didn't really enjoy them- if I did I probably would have gone to the larger UC than the smaller liberal arts school I'm going to attend. Everything else was a mixed bag. I enjoy writing when it's on something I'm interested about, I dislike it when it's rote, but what I'm interested in is usually fleeting. That tends to apply to motivation too. I can get aroused for a lot of work in one case, and in another similar case I can't be bothered.
I guess my favorite piece of work in the last two years was a project in regular economics. We were divided into groups and ordered to create a business model in report style. We created Fatoline.
Fatoline was dreamed up in response to an unsustainable America. This unsustainability is rooted in the suburban commute lifestyle- people drive everywhere, consuming vast amounts of gasoline and gaining weight. The Fatoline company has two public fronts, its liposuction service and its gasoline service. We take the fatty liposuctioned tissue, put it through some huge centrifuges, introduce some modified lipases (modified through science magic) and heat and boom, we have gasoline, which is sold through our other front. This keeps the automobiles running, the people skinny, and keeps the suburban structure of the U.S. stable. Only now, instead of nasty foreign oil coming in, we have the wholesome, local fat-conversion company keeping our lifestyle afloat.
Unfortunately, after crunching the numbers, it turned out that for this system to work, each person would have to produce some obscene amount of fat each year, somewhere in the thousands or ten thousands. No matter though. Once we figure out how to get people to be able to get that big, the dream is definitely alive.
I guess I liked the project because it involved a little bit of everything.
Re: Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?
#150I'm an artist (well, a student really) with an interest in mathematics and computer science abstractions. I like to create work related to and inspired by technology. Given how important these fields of knowledge have become I believe that creating artwork from them is an important way to reflect on the state of contemporary society. I guess I do consider myself a bit of a hacker (I design my own circuit boards and write my own software for my projects), but I'm not really affiliated with the tech community outside of the internet and mostly hang out with other artists.
edit: I guess it kind of goes without saying, but what I get out of HN in particular is a combination of keeping my foot in technology and reading interesting news.