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

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141–150 of 436 posts

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

#141
I'm really pumped about this open source tool project I've started which promises to join Lean Startup/Hypothesis-Driven Development and DevOps. Enter everything only once, have it available wherever it's needed.

Analysis has always been an area that the tech community has lacked, ever since it was overdone back in the days of structured programming. It's really cool to bring back a bit of structured analysis as just another tool in the DevOps pipeline and join up the information with all the folks that need it.

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

#142

I'm entering radiology residency, and I'm very pro-automation / machine learning. There's a contentious debate in the field about whether radiologists will be replaced: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/will-ai-replace-rad... HackerNews is very developer-focused. If you guys saw what a radiologist does on a 9-5 basis you'd be amazed it hasn't already been automated. Sitting behind a computer, looking at images…

Have you heard about http://www.heartflow.com/ ?

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a really good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cosqlfqrpFA Also, to answer your question, not it's not the same as a website because it will be a native Android app with the ability to communicate with the Android OS, like any other Android app. The possibility of things — in terms of improved UX — that you can accomplish with instant apps are infinite. It all comes down to how you want to use it.

I watched the video and honestly, this is terrible. If I'm clicking on a link I want to open it with my browser, not with some app. I find this extremely annoying with facebook and even the news carousel already. I can't open new tabs, copy the url, switch to other tabs like I would in the normal browser. This is extremely confusing and I don't how this benefits me in any way.

I couldn't agree more. I'm excited about the idea of streaming apps, but the execution here is terrible. How do you control which url opens which app? If somebody sends you a reddit or hn link, which app does it run? There are dozens out there for both! The whole point of the app is not to have to manage these things, but the only way I can see this working is if you have yet another area in settings to manage which apps open for which links.

A better implementation would have been to have a popup with a list of compatible apps to run, including an option to run it in a browser like any normal link.

I really hope the NFC bit is opt-in by default. I don't want to have to manually disable it every time I get a new phone. In fact, even if I've opted into having the SF Park app run when I'm near a parking meter, I want the option to "reject" it just like I do when I get an incoming phone call.

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

#144
post #131

Safe selective destruction of cells via their internal chemistry, not surface markers, via uptake of lipid-encapsulated programmable suicide gene arrangements. With the right program and a distinctive chemistry to target in the unwanted cell population, this flexible technology has next to no side-effects, and enables rapid development of therapies such as: 1) senescent cell clearance with resorting to chemotherapeut…

For 3) does destroying all mature immune cells also get rid of all immunities that the patient has gained throughout life from vaccines, previous illness, etc? Would it make the patient very fragile, not to have gone through gaining those immunities at a young age?

Revaccination, yes, definitely necessary in the idealized case of a complete wipe of immune cells. But that's a small problem in comparison to having a broken immune system. Just get all the vaccinations done following immune repopulation.

Part of the problem in old people is that they have too much memory in the immune system, especially of pervasive herpesviruses like cytomegalovirus. Those memory cells take up immunological space that should for preference be occupied by aggressive cells capable of action.

Another point: in old people, as a treatment for immunosenescence, immune destruction would probably need to be paired with some form of cell therapy to repopulate the immune system. In young people, not needed, but in the old there is a reduced rate of cell creation - loss of stem cell function, thymic involution, etc. That again, isn't a big challenge at this time, and is something that can already be done.

At present sweeping immune destruction is only used for people with fatal autoimmunities like multiple sclerosis because the clearance via chemotherapy isn't something you'd do if you had any better options - it's pretty unpleasant, and produces lasting harm to some degree. Those people who are now five or more years into sustained remission of the disease have functional immunity and are definitely much better off for the procedure, even with its present downsides, given where they were before. If the condition is rhematoid arthritis, however, it becomes much less of an obvious cost-benefit equation, which is why there needs to be a safe, side-effect free method of cell destruction.

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

#145

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!

Here, see slides 24, 43, 44 in particular. RISC-V cores run about half the area and power of the competition.

https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Wed1345-RISCV-W...

The SiFive chip is >300MHz on a 180nm process, but the higher end rise-v chips while having competitive perf/clock still have lower clock speeds than the big guys. That is probably just a matter of time though.

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

#146
post #67

As a .NET dev, .NET Core is pretty exciting. We're porting a sizable application to .Net Core so we can be on Linux and save cost and time on instance launch. I'm writing an in-depth blog post series about the process because I haven't found any significant migration stories. I'm hoping it will help a lot of people through the process.

mind linking to the blog?

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

#147

I'm entering radiology residency, and I'm very pro-automation / machine learning. There's a contentious debate in the field about whether radiologists will be replaced: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/will-ai-replace-rad... HackerNews is very developer-focused. If you guys saw what a radiologist does on a 9-5 basis you'd be amazed it hasn't already been automated. Sitting behind a computer, looking at images…

Have you heard about http://www.heartflow.com/ ?

Yes! Stanford has started (at least) two radiology imaging companies. Heartflow and iSchemView (formerly RAPID): http://www.ischemaview.com/

These are examples of next-generation radiology companies. The current generation of products are focused on image storage and display. These new companies offer automated image analysis before the radiologist even looks at the image. iSchemaView does hemorrhage maps as soon as new head CT or head MRI is acquired.

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

#149
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you expect that junior developer (someone with very little or no development experience) will use a test tool or any other development technique? I expect that junior developer in software field should be able to program only.

I expect that junior developer in software field should be able to program only. That is very often the case. It needs to change. Testing is a part of software development, and anyone who writes software should be aware of it. I feel the same way about documentation. And requirements. You can't write good software without knowledge of the processes that surround development. It isn't enough just to be able to write g…

Maybe. Personally, I've come to think that you need the right tool for the right job.

If you spend more time writing / running tests that you would fixing the bugs they find, you may be doing it wrong. If you're writing documentation no one will read, you may be doing it wrong.

They clearly do have a place though. As for maintaining a set of requirements... I appreciate there must be some environments where what is required is well understood and relatively stable. I'm not quite sure if I should look forward to working in such a place or not!

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me as a web developer, the most exciting new development is react native (not react itself) - it's redefining the border between web and native apps in a way that cordova and xamarin never did.

As a web dev, the most exciting development I see is the rise of progressive web apps and a shift away from native apps in situations where web-like experince is more appropriate. That said, I'll be thrilled if React Native gives rise to higher quality apps in situations where a native app is unavoidable (e.g. my bank's app).

uh... why is a native bank app unavoidable?

you're all idiots.

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