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Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#91

Post by JoachimSchipper »

phkahler wrote: post #73

Field: embedded software. To me RISC-V is the most exciting thing for the next few years. The performance appears to be awesome, and free CPU IP will allow more varieties of specialized low-cost chips for specific use cases. It should also have a positive effect on development environments by encouraging wider use of free toolchains.

I'm also doing embedded work, but I don't really see - or expect - performance from the RISC-V cores above similar CPU designs that consume about the same area/gate-equivalents; did I miss some recent results?

Of course, freely-available and well-supported CPU IP can be very cool!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#92

Post by robotresearcher »

tyingq wrote: post #49
rrrhys wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to sound really naive... Isn't that just a website?

I'm curious about the "just a website" bit as well. It's slow going, but new features like service workers, web workers, web sockets, webrtc, seem to be closing the gap between "website" and app. Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?

> Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?

Yes. It happened about ten years ago.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#93

Post by pdimitar »

mikecb wrote: post #78
pdimitar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Tensorflow only usable online, on Google's servers? I am looking for something that is fully independent and 100% runnable on my machines only.

No. Google has a hosted version of tensorflow, called CloudML, but tensorflow is an open source project that can be run anywhere.

Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#94

Post by donaltroddyn »

onion2k wrote: post #74
donaltroddyn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is one area where webdev is way behind other fields, and i think we're going to see lots of new tooling in this area soon. We're currently working on a way to help devs test web app functionality and complete user journeys without having to actually write tests in Selenium or whatever. The idea to is let devs write down what they want to test in English ("load the page", "search for a flight", "fill the fo…

Sounds intriguing. There are a few tools for recording interactions with a webpage in order to replay the actions as a test (Ghost Inspector, Selenium IDE, etc) but they tend to be pretty horrible. I've been working on my own as a Chrome extension for a little while. What you're building sounds really interesting though, especially if it can deal with complex Javascript apps. Anything that can make developers more in…

Yeah, I've looked at all the current tools and there's basically two types (other then just writing straight Selenium):

- Test recorders that aren't a great experience and output incomprehensible, brittle tests.

- Test composers that I can best describe as 90's SQL query builders for Selenium.

Complex JS apps are still a challenge for us (especially with some of the WTF code we come across in the wild), but we have a strategy in the works for them. We're still pre-release though. If you're interested, send me an email (donal@unravel.io) and I'll add you to our alpha list.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#95

Post by tyingq »

robotresearcher wrote: post #92
tyingq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the "just a website" bit as well. It's slow going, but new features like service workers, web workers, web sockets, webrtc, seem to be closing the gap between "website" and app. Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?

> Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps? Yes. It happened about ten years ago.

Ah, yes. Guess I should have said iphone / android native apps, especially ones that depend on network data such that the native app wouldn't be any faster than a web site.

I don't get the appeal, for example, of native apps for things like airlines, amazon, ebay, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#96

Post by dorian-graph »

mafribe wrote: post #47
dorian-graph wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone wanting to begin involving program verification in a practical way to their day-to-day work, do you have any suggestions, resources, or anything?

That depends on your background and your goals. How much do you know about modern testing, abstract interpretation, SAT/SMT solving? In any case, as of Feb 2017, a lot of this technology is not yet economical for non-safety critical mainstream programming. Peter O'Hearn's talk at the Turing Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcVx3g3SmmY might be of interest.

Very little on abstract interpretation and SAT/SMT solving. I'm effectively starting from 0. I'll go through the talk, thanks!

Why isn't it economical yet?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#97

Post by petra »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #20

Embedded systems - Wireless Sensors Networks, I know it has been there for long time but IoT would encourage it more. It could enable development of different kinds of devices as well. Look at camera industry for example. There should be more types of sensor to be more popular than just the image sensor. Quadcopter/Drone/AI etc. In my view, there are still a huge room of applications where wireless and sensor combine…

>> a huge room of applications where wireless and sensor combined

Can you please expand on this ?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#98

Post by nojvek »

aniijbod wrote: post #87

The progress towards indistinguishable-from-reality realism in graphics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo5ztSsA_zk

The facial expressions were pretty mind blowing. I sometimes think with VR and graphics getting so good, will some gamers actually spend more time in virtual worlds than the real world

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#99

Post by retreatguru »

onion2k wrote: post #74
donaltroddyn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is one area where webdev is way behind other fields, and i think we're going to see lots of new tooling in this area soon. We're currently working on a way to help devs test web app functionality and complete user journeys without having to actually write tests in Selenium or whatever. The idea to is let devs write down what they want to test in English ("load the page", "search for a flight", "fill the fo…

Sounds intriguing. There are a few tools for recording interactions with a webpage in order to replay the actions as a test (Ghost Inspector, Selenium IDE, etc) but they tend to be pretty horrible. I've been working on my own as a Chrome extension for a little while. What you're building sounds really interesting though, especially if it can deal with complex Javascript apps. Anything that can make developers more in…

We are using ghostinspector mainly for it ability to compare screenshots between runs. I think the future of testing will be apps like this that don't require you to specify every little div but just record your actions and play them back and catch differences. Right now ghostinspector only takes a screenshot at the very end but they are adding a feature where you can take a shot anytime. As these apps get better at knowing what matters and what to ignore - all the better.
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