Ask HN: Non-developers: What brings you to HN?

Used to be in aerospace engineering. I have an interest in computers/media and appreciated the quality of content on HN. Many of the articles and discussions fly over my head but I enjoy that. It's like living in a foreign place; you start to understand the language after a time.

I am now a lead developer and still enjoy browsing here.

> If you're not a developer

* You wouldn't mean software developer, would you? Property, product, and marketing campaign developers interested in a start-up business might not be happy with IT types monopolizing the word "development".

* Years ago when I worked in IT we were only ever called "computer programmers". People called Enterprise Business Software Development Engineers usually couldn't program.

* I've learnt more about programming doing it as a hobby since leaving paid IT work than I ever learnt when working at it. Does my non-software day job mean I'm not a "developer"?

* A doctor, administrator, or marketer learning programming as part of their job could be better placed for automating it than a software developer learning about some domain they want to automate.

I do r&d. Indirect networking and the hope to spot niche market opportunities that may go big in a not too distant future.

I run a 2 year old company in Shanghai, China creating English resumes, interview coaching, enhancing LinkedIn Profiles, advising on school picks for undergrad and grad program seekers, and preparing academic application documents for US, UK, Canadian, Australian, and Japan. Prior to that I had a Wall Street type career for ~24 years which required use of R-Project and a bit of Python.

I come to HN multiple times a day since I thoroughly enjoy seeing the great breakthroughs and technology mashups people make. Also running a smaller company, I am trying to utilize IT in every way including semi-automating our onboarding, client workflows, document processing, etc.

Through HN, I have learned 1) how to host a server in AWS Beijing with multiple docker containers, 2) how to run a low maintenance blog with Armin Ronacher's excellent Lektor, 3) how to create a biz process workflow with Typeform-->Zapier-->countless apps, 4) how to set up an R-studio Shiny Server and use dplyr to analyze university databases, etc. Soon, I will be semi/automating reports for clients using Rmarkdown/Latex which will save my lean org tons of time.

I am blown away by the breadth and depth of material and links. HN is my primary launchpad for all things solutions related. I know I couldn't run my business without it. And I am really grateful for the genuine efforts people on the site make to assist each other.

Vince Fulco, CFA, CAIA Managing Director 伟思胜企业管理咨询（上海）有限公司 Weisisheng Corporate Management Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd. vfulco@weisisheng.cn 淘宝店：伟思胜简历面试留学服务中心 微信订阅号： vfulco-weisisheng LinkedIn: https://cn.linkedin.com/in/vfulco

> this is a forum for software developers

I always took HN to be a forum for people either starting up a business or into "hacking" things. Of course many software people visit here, probably because many fast-growing businesses over the last 20-30 years have been software based, and/or many products and systems that people hack have a large software component. But HN isn't specifically for software developers as far as I know, and people hacking for growth in the property business shouldn't be classed as "non-developers" on Hacker News.