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Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#51

Post by achenet »

metadat wrote: post #2

Okay, I'll byte. I love almost every aspect of computing, from software to hardware. Distributed systems, networking, single-machine vertical scaling, graphics programming, statistics and ML, NLP, vision, frontend. Also love server hardware, grew up water-cooling and overclocking systems in the late nineties and early 00s. I also find it fulfilling to help friends and family resolve their computer problems. I'd like…

> I'm a little sick of the physically boring aspect of sitting in front of a computer for many hours on end.

you ever try a standing desk?

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#52

Post by rochak »

In general and at work, I like to learn and get better at Distributed Systems. In my free time, I like to learn how to do things faster: Vim, Tmux, Git, Scripting, Automation, System Administration. The joy I get when I figure out something new always gets me craving for more.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#53

Post by TrueGeek »

Microsoft’s mobile framework: Maui (previously named Xamarin). It’s not nearly as popular as React Native but it’s wonderful to work with and it’s great having a company like Microsoft behind it. I’ve been working in it for 8 years now and still having a blast.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#54

Post by metadat »

achenet wrote: post #51
metadat wrote: post #2

Okay, I'll byte. I love almost every aspect of computing, from software to hardware. Distributed systems, networking, single-machine vertical scaling, graphics programming, statistics and ML, NLP, vision, frontend. Also love server hardware, grew up water-cooling and overclocking systems in the late nineties and early 00s. I also find it fulfilling to help friends and family resolve their computer problems. I'd like…

> I'm a little sick of the physically boring aspect of sitting in front of a computer for many hours on end. you ever try a standing desk?

Standing desk is actually all I use now! It's improved my physical well-being tremendously.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#56

Post by frompdx »

For fun, programming microcontrollers with Forth. Personally, I find programming an Arduino Uno with Froth much more enjoyable than using the Arduino IDE. You can issue commands from your terminal to your microcontroller to test out different bits of your code. For example, the word "start" starts a motor and the word "stop" stops it. No need to recompile your code.

For work, I like the infrastructure as code space. Bringing order to chaos.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#57

Post by naet »

Arguably too large to be a niche, but I love everything web development.

Making projects that anyone can pull up on nearly any device via their browser, without installing anything, is so incredibly satisfying. You can make anything run in browser these days including games and full fledged applications. You can make art and interactive experiences, or you can share minimalist text based content, and either way it's very open for people of all walks to browse and experience how they like.

In some ways I was raised on free internet experiences, from early flash games, to IRC, to forums and boards, to wikipedia, to youtube, eventually to HN... we really are blessed with so much stuff that is so accessible and I love to contribute even small things to the massive ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#58

Post by Tao3300 »

nottorp wrote: post #45

Tbh your favorite niche will stop becoming favorite when you know enough about it. When I was bitbanging wires to talk (in a simple way) to another chip the first few times it was exciting. Now it's open schematics, figure out what to connect, do simple tests, get it to work. On the other hand, if you don't do your favorite niche for your day job and you have limited time to work on it, it can keep you entertained fo…

> your favorite niche will stop becoming favorite when you know enough about it.

This is a good time to write a "Lies Programmers Believe About (Niche)" piece.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

#59

Post by rg111 »

This is not a proper niche, and way to broad, but: "implementation niche" is kinda my thing.

Some examples-

1. Artificial life design and simulation

2. Biological systems simulation and research, like, computational neuro science

3. Implememting math. The "science" in computer science

4. Deep Reinforcement Learning

5. Designing and implementing algorithms

6. Simulating physical systems

7. Computational Math

So, "modeling" in general, loosely. Also "optimization".

Other than these:

I like edge devices and microcomputers. I love everything about them.

Other niches that I exposed myself to, but didn't like:

1. Programming art (NOT ai art like Stable Diffusion, GANs, etc.)- I never found it that good.

2. Networking.

3. Databases.

Kinda neutral about frontend. Don't like, don't dislike.

Seems interesting now, but I know little to nothing about:

1. Cryptography

2. Quantum Information and Computation

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