11–20 of 63 posts
I've worked 5-6 programming jobs in 5-6 different industries. Honestly the job is pretty similar in any industry. I'd recommend working for whoever pays best and/or a team you get on with.
If you find web-scraping dull don't pursue it. Life is short.
Have a look at the legal industry. There are quite a few legal tech startups by now. Even web-scraping applications are rare in legal. The sector is famous for being profitable (high margins), rusty and inefficient.
* There is considerable structural sharing inside finance regulations, but it is not hierarchical
* Regulations may be changed at any time, and these changes may be future-dated or back-dated
* Users insist on arbitrarily complex exceptions and overrides
* Nontechnical users (particularly legal) will insist on being able to vet and introspect
In my experience, anyone can do this badly, but to make it scalable and robust requires subtlety and a good understanding of formal logic, ontology and DSL design. It's a good fit for FP. Oh, and there's plenty of room for machine learning: Automated discovery, natural language processing, noncompliance detection, etc.
The problem of turning regulations into a expert system that is robust against future changes has not been solved, and there's demand for such systems from even the most sophisticated financial companies, even though everyone expects they'd be able to build such systems in-house.
If you like web-scraping, and you're not an idiot, you immediately have an information advantage for anything you decide to do. Do not underestimate this advantage. I would suggest you leverage your interest in web-scraping and use it to customers in what ever niche you believe you can sell them something. Collect your "beta" users through web-scraping, figure out a way to reach them at scale. Build/sell a product th…
If you like web-scraping, and you're not an idiot, you immediately have an information advantage for anything you decide to do. Do not underestimate this advantage. I would suggest you leverage your interest in web-scraping and use it to customers in what ever niche you believe you can sell them something. Collect your "beta" users through web-scraping, figure out a way to reach them at scale. Build/sell a product th…
Can you provide an example or two of a project that involved web scraping? (without divulging client info) I can see how it could be used for price scraping in web retail, but am drawing a blank in other industries.
Damn Small Linux, a very small Linux distribution
Definitive software library
Domain-specific language, a computer language designed for a specific problem domain
What do you want to optimise around? Stable job, 9-17, decent salary? Lost of money, caution to the wind? Be something [for one or more of several values of 'something'] to a lot of people? Fiddle with deeply intellectual CS problems, shielded from pedestrian worries about revenue and users? I personally enjoy the knowledge of having solved a real (business) problem for real people, and being appreciated both financi…
How do you do it, as a consultant or as a 9-5 job? Any advice on getting started as someone who graduated 2014?
Whereabouts are you? If you're interested in PLT, DSLs and compilers, there are some small enclaves in finance that might interest you. edit spelling
Have a look at the legal industry. There are quite a few legal tech startups by now. Even web-scraping applications are rare in legal. The sector is famous for being profitable (high margins), rusty and inefficient.
Having worked at a fintech startup specializing in decision systems for regulatory compliance, I second this. There are interesting theoretical aspects stemming from the fact that domain is very tricky to model. * There is considerable structural sharing inside finance regulations, but it is not hierarchical * Regulations may be changed at any time, and these changes may be future-dated or back-dated * Users insist o…
Which one are you talking about: Damn Small Linux, a very small Linux distribution Definitive software library Domain-specific language, a computer language designed for a specific problem domain