I really love working through Project Euler problems and coding the solutions to them. That, and very recently making a Game boy emulator in Rust. Never had any clue how emulators work and it's just so much fun.
Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
61–70 of 112 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#62Tbh 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.
> This is a good time to write a "Lies Programmers Believe About (Niche)" piece.
And switch careers to blogging about programming? New niche!
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#63I try to create scripts for anything.
Tools have evolved a lot now, so there's less stuff to script for but still I like it.
When I open my PC my browser, mails, text editor, slack, teams etc will load up. Browser will have few tabs opened.
My current development project will be up and running.
My machine will ping another machine which will note the time I came in and when it's time to go that will be noted too. Helps to know time spent.
When I was in corporate, our office required 2 punch ins, 1 for general entrance into building and 1 for office timings. It was okay if sometimes you forgot to punch in for office as they had agreement with building staff that allowed them access to our office staff entry exit stamp. But if you don't put in office punch in and do the punch out it'd create false entry and one had to go to HR office to get things correctly set.
I found that office punch in machine was on network, by asking to networking and hardware team I got proper code to do remote punch ins. Never had any missing punch after that.
There's also a script which does a routine check on all my clients website like, ping them, login, check 1-2 page and logout. Do it twice a day. Once when machine is started and once in middle of the day. It has saved me countless times when some code is pushed and if that breaks I usually have enough time to fix it before someone from client side notices it.
Had WhatsApp message related script too before they banned other tools access on the app. But I hear now API is allowing that automation again, haven't tried to do it though..
Used to have a script in js for browser console to read HN in dark mode, but had to put it every time a page loaded so have given up on it.
Usually I make them in python or shell. supervisor has been a gift as well.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#64Tinkering with microcontrollers is probably the most satisfying, because it really challenges you to understand exactly what is going on at all times, right down to the electrical level. Developing for retro hardware can be fun too, for similar reasons.
I’m really glad to hear this. Building hardware for the real world amplified the power of software incredibly. PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life.
> PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life.
Who is "we"? Your profile doesn't say.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#65Arguably 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…
I miss flash games
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#66Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#67Systems for expressing game components as data that closely matches how you'd describe them in natural language. And ways to write the data as code literals that don't look very different than the data format.
I'm mostly interested in turn based games where everything can be made simpler by leveraging the fact that it's OK to have a computational spike in response to a player input.
I once had a system where expressing game components and game states was so straightforward that writing tests felt like playing the game, because 95% of my effort in writing a test was in creatively thinking about game states and components and 5% translating it to data. I normally find writing tests very unpleasant but in this case it wasn't just tolerable, but actually fun.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#68I created https://Bigger.Bio as a way for The TikTok crowd and Instagramers
to put multiple links on their profiles bios and do cross promotion. Admittedly it's not rocket science but an interesting project nonetheless.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#69My favorite programming niche is SEO optimization. I really like optimizing pages and see the traffic grow.
That's not programming, mate.
There’s so much programming you can’t even imagine. Core web vitals, ttfb, sitemaps, robots.txt, mobile first optimizations, responsive design, keyword monitoring, meta tags, url structures, and a dozen more super challenging tasks.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?
#70Pen Plotting. For those unaware, pen plotters are basically tabletop robots that you can put a pen into and have it draw whatever you want. There's a friendly online community of people making art with them on twitter (search #plottertwitter) and instagram. It's nice to have a coding-related outlet that also produces something tangible you can hold in your hand or put on a wall.
These are far more satisfying than dot matrix or laser printers. I used to draw stage lighting plots with them in college in the mid-80's. So much fun to watch them work.
I worked in a construction company where we drawed blueprints in AutoCAD for these pen plotters. It was very soothing to see them work, but we had this pervert engineer who would caress the long brush's hairs under them and whisper sexy things. Unfortunately, that is irremediably linked in my mind to pen plotters.