Ask HN: What would you love to work on? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#21

Post by jamesotron » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 12:50 AM UTC

spitfire wrote: post #6

Aircraft. In particular from the start to finish of designing a light two seater aircraft. I think we could improve safety a lot with modern glass displays. For example, we have the weather report from XM, and we have the pilot's flight plan on computer. Why not warn them if this flight would be dangerous (or dangerous for their experience level).

My most beloved hobby is radio controlled helicopters. I would love to do something involving autonomous aircraft. Control systems and navigation. Should have gone to school, I guess.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#22

Post by gaia-forming » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 1:03 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #20

Incoming training manager at an expensive brothel chain. Seriously though, seems like this question gets asked about every two weeks around here. I love flying airplanes. From the first time I sat in a cockpit I knew that I would rather fly than anything else. But I also knew that making a career out of flying would be the worst thing in the world to do. Why? Because sooner or later it becomes a job , just like all o…

> I've also found that once you pour yourself into something, the love will naturally come. Therefore, it's wise to choose something you love and that's going to pay off.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#23

Post by cturner » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 1:12 AM UTC

If I had enough money to meet my current goals sorted out I'd study to be an osteopath at a good school. It's a lot like hacking, and it directly helps people who are debilitated in a way with which I identify.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#24

Post by modeless » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 2:34 AM UTC

Computer vision for autonomous robots.

I've done a lot of 3D graphics and I think working on the inverse could be fun too. I think a lot of progress is going to be made quickly now that 3D depth-sensing cameras are becoming available. Most interesting to me are self-driving cars (e.g. the DARPA Grand Challenge robots) or dynamically balancing 2-legged anthropomorphic robots (e.g. Honda's ASIMO).

I don't know anyone in the field, so if I was really going to pursue this I'd probably start by going back to school.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#25

Post by bdr » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 2:59 AM UTC

gaia-forming wrote: post #5

mrlyc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was indeed a lot of unit testing as well as very intense reviews of every single line of code. We used C and Linux as we needed an operating system that wouldn't kill people. You had to have a minimum of twenty years experience to work there. An upside was that there was no pressure at all about shipping the product before it was ready, even though we were well behind schedule. The downside was that you were al…

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. I think a lot can be learned from that industry. 1. Write defect free software from the get-go 2. Take your time

...if you're in that industry.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#26

Post by Raphael » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 3:53 AM UTC

erikwiffin wrote: post #16

bmelton wrote: post #10

Comic books. If I had my druthers, I would somehow be working in comic books. At some point in my life, I had a good deal of artistic talent, though the years I spent goofing off in puberty seem to have killed it entirely. It's something of a dying art form, as most print-based things are, but also seem to have resurged in many ways, especially as movie properties. I'm eagerly waiting to see whether or not TakeComics…

is there anything like cafepress or threadless for comic books? could be a really cool way to keep a dying industry going.

Copy shop?

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#27

Post by jonnytran » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 4:00 AM UTC

Writing interpreters using functional programming.

I'm actually doing this now -- writing interpreters for DSLs using Clojure at my current job at Health Market Science. Even though it blends in with all the other companies as another lame Java shop, I have actually had the opportunity to work on very interesting problems, and I have had enough freedom to use cutting-edge tools. I even prototyped a JRuby on Rails frontend that called into one of my interpreters written in Clojure. For some reason, I have always loved writing interpreters.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#28

Post by aufreak » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 5:16 AM UTC

Life is tooooo big to get stuck working on only one thing :P

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#29

Post by aerique » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 5:36 AM UTC

I'd love to work on putting an autonomous robot on an interstellar body.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to work on?

#30

Post by korch » Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 5:37 AM UTC

I'd love to work on a generalized recommendation engine. After spending a fair amount of time tinkering on the Netflix prize, I now see countless sites and apps are in need of generalized recommendations--on the scale of being another layer we need on top of the web. And the topic pretty quickly drops you into the deep-end of mathematics, so developing that kind of challenging software is a plus.