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Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#61

Post by marssaxman »

carlivar wrote: post #58
marssaxman wrote: post #25

I am refitting a 44-foot sailboat, repowering it with an electric motor and lithium batteries; solar panels and a wind generator to come. Lots of practical work with my hands: wiring, plumbing, carpentry, fiberglass, sewing, drilling, sanding, wrenching, tinkering. After decades of complicated software efforts, a majority of which have never gone anywhere, it feels really satisfying to build things that you can see a…

I'm not sure this is "at work"? Is this a job or a hobby?

It is my full-time occupation, but I'm not getting paid to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#62

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

random_coder wrote: post #57
f0e4c2f7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just VR for now. Nothing to share yet but expect a Show HN when I have a trailer or a demo!

Could you share your VR development setup? PC specs, which platforms/devices do you develop for etc...

I'm using a pretty underpowered PC 1000 series graphics card. It chugs. Building for the Quest 2 using UE5, Blender, and a few plugins and templates from the unreal ecosystem.

I also have a huion drawing tablet but I think you could go quite far in blender with just a mouse.

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#63

Post by IYasha »

Came here for positive stories. :) Every time I tried turning things I like into a job turned them into things I hate. ( As soon as the "must" factor is introduced, "fun" evaporates. That's how I stopped being a paid programmer.

PS: related HN article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31107128

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#64

Post by carlivar »

marssaxman wrote: post #61
carlivar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is "at work"? Is this a job or a hobby?

It is my full-time occupation, but I'm not getting paid to do it.

I don't think your answer, though cool, qualifies in the spirit of the question.

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#65

Post by tgamblin »

numerik_meister wrote: post #8

Early on in my career I noticed that the most fun programming seems to be done by people who are not actually trained as computer scientists: mathematicians, physicists, engineers, chemists, astronomers ...etc This sort of numerical computing and simulation stuff is incredibly fun and quite rewarding. You work much more often on core logic and much less often on boring fluff. Of course it is all very subjective and i…

You can do this kind of work and also get paid decently at a national lab. For example, LLNL is hiring!

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#67

Post by wara23arish »

gfxthrowaway123 wrote: post #53

A couple years back I switched from web dev to graphics programming on a game team at a big AAA studio Really enjoy the work itself, there’s tons of interesting algorithms/optimization involved I feel I actually use my CS knowledge from university more doing this work Its also really satisfying to visually see the result of your code in the game On the other hand I do find it a lot harder of a job since you not only…

did you have any past experience before switching?

how was the transition?

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#68

Post by mvind »

numerik_meister wrote: post #8

Early on in my career I noticed that the most fun programming seems to be done by people who are not actually trained as computer scientists: mathematicians, physicists, engineers, chemists, astronomers ...etc This sort of numerical computing and simulation stuff is incredibly fun and quite rewarding. You work much more often on core logic and much less often on boring fluff. Of course it is all very subjective and i…

Have you experienced a caveat in terms of coding quality? I study mathematics, and I think it is pretty standard for mathematicians to disregard theoretical run times when experimenting and doing "napkin" computations. Invariably this leads to relatively poor code quality. Speaking from experience, I just failed a coding interview because I solved the question like a mathematician would do, i.e. a quick and dirty way. What is your experience with this phenomenon? I know academics often gets railed lacking concepts in data structures etc.

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#69

Post by markus_zhang »

Oca wrote: post #50

I am designing a microchip for gravitational wave measurements, at the same time trying to understand and model the problems not showing in the simulations of the previously designed chips. We will soon begin with the design of new chips for the next generation Large Hadron Collider. In my opinion, in addition to what I am working on, the freedom in the working environment and colleagues' love for what they are doing…

This really sounds interesting. Just curious does this chip need super high precision? Do you have to get a hang of the physics behind gravitational wave? Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Who's having a ton of fun at work and what are you doing?

#70

Post by gfxthrowaway123 »

wara23arish wrote: post #67
gfxthrowaway123 wrote: post #53

A couple years back I switched from web dev to graphics programming on a game team at a big AAA studio Really enjoy the work itself, there’s tons of interesting algorithms/optimization involved I feel I actually use my CS knowledge from university more doing this work Its also really satisfying to visually see the result of your code in the game On the other hand I do find it a lot harder of a job since you not only…

did you have any past experience before switching? how was the transition?

From web dev work only really relevant experience was C++. Mainly got the job based on side projects from outside work. Had always been casually interested in graphics and I spent around 2 years dabbling with side projects outside work (stuff like making a toy rendering engine), reading some graphics books, brushing up on linear algebra.

Transition was definitely tough in the beginning due to steep learning curve

You think you know a decent amount from doing tutorials/side projects but a real production engine is a lot more complicated because its been optimized over the years and as a noob its not obvious why things are designed the way they are.

I felt like web dev you can become pretty competent in like 2-3 years but with graphics it feels like the ceiling is much higher and starts to verge on research as you get more into the topic

A lot of newer rendering techniques you can't easily google and you have to end up reading papers if you want to understand/implement them

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