Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#551

Post by rocklawn » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

finfun234 wrote: post #97

I launched two projects. 1) http://instant10-k.com/ An efficient way to search 10-k and 10-q filings for publicly listed companies. A Form 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that gives a comprehensive summary of a company's financial performance. 10-Q is the quarterly version. If you have ever purchased an individual stock you should read the 10-k and 10-Q reports.…

I liked your first project's fast response time. Would be nice if you included 20-F filings as well. Otherwise from a usability standpoint, multiple sorting / grouping options for different forms would be helpful, as well as an error message for those searching for companies which don't file under 10-K (like Amdocs).

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#552

Post by georgeecollins » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 3:42 AM UTC

cmonfeat wrote: post #62

georgeecollins wrote: post #17

Much more VR than I expected to, and it was more interesting than I expected as well.

What sort of VR stuff we're you getting into, if you don't mind me asking? It's a pretty cool space, but I don't see to many people playing in it (maybe because of the barrier to entry).

I have worked on some for the Rift, the Gear and the Daydream. I think the reason why not a lot of people are in the space is that customers aren't there yet. It's one of those things that doesn't live up to the hype, but it is getting better fast.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#553

Post by jayceekay » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

songzme wrote: post #546

drdeadringer wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the holes that were black boxed to me in my engineering growth What were the holes that black-boxed you in your engineering growth?

Here are a few off the top of my head. 1. Servers. I've always 'pushed to heroku' without really knowing how servers worked. 2. Git. I've always just used gitlab or other git hosting services without knowing how to build it. 3. File hosting. I've always just uploaded files without knowing how files are processed / stored. 4. Email. SMTP is like a big unknown, I've never really cared about how emails worked. 5. SSL. T…

i admire what you're doing but I wonder why spend any significant amount of time on most if not all points on this list? if the goal is "couch -> working developer" then I don't think they're relevant to getting ramped up and working as a programmer/dec/swe who can deliver value. the black boxes you talk about might be better off taught in a lazy fashion so to speak.

a lot of these seem devopsy. I've definitely delved into a lot of these as an extracurricular activity over the years or have had to learn for work reasons (like being the only guy willing to take on the devops type work) but I'm not sure it belongs in a boot camp type curriculum.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#554

Post by IA21 » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 5:07 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #106

I spent most of the year working my ass off consulting for one of America's most hated companies building an utterly pointless system. My only consolation is knowing that I wasted a ton of their money since there's no chance it will pay any returns.

Oh man, I don't think I've ever laughed this much on anything I've read on HN. Thanks for making my day. :)

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#555

Post by _mrmnmly » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

Since the last quarter of 2017 I'm working during my free time on Raita - a static site generator with web interface, built with Express.js and Vue.js.

It's still in baby steps, but I'm already building my personal website using it (so I can see what features I'm still missing), then I plan to build a starter theme and in the end official site.

If You're interested, You can see the actual code here: https://github.com/mrmnmly/raita

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#556

Post by layoric » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

nairboon wrote: post #527

layoric wrote: post #430

At the end of 2016 I left contracting gig for a full time position to work on helping solve intermittency problem with solar PV power generation through forecasting. With a team of 3 including myself, the only professional software developer, we have launched and run a solar radiation and PV power forecasting/observation API (solcast.com.au) that can provide solar radiation and PV power forecasts world wide that upda…

What model do you use for power forecasting? Do you use different models for different forecast horizons e.g 1h, 1day, etc. or did you find that (recursive) multi step forecasting with the same model produces better results?

We forecast radiation just radiation data as the base for all power forecasting (conversion from solar radiation -> PV power done on the fly)

Solar radiation forecasting incorporates a few models for 1-7 days, and for now casting (0-4 hours) is based on NWP wind forecasting combined with our own cloud tracking, ML and blending with NWP models from 4-24 hours.

Some of the above might be slightly off as I’m not a meteorologist or study solar radiation modelling. Luckily Solcast founders are and we are also partnered with a project at the Australian National University working with some extremely bright people to get the science right.

If you want to get further into the details, feel free to email Nick Engerer or James Luffman (contacts on our website) about the science, or post on our community forums (forums.solcast.com.au).

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#557

Post by KajMagnus » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

smaddox wrote: post #541

KajMagnus wrote: post #526

Usability Testing Exchange — where other people will do usability testing of your website, for free, and give feedback to you. You give feedback to others too, and get back as much feedback as you give, counted in characters. https://usability.testing.exchange And EffectiveDiscussions, a discussion forum that brings together the best from Slack, Discourse, StackOverflow, HackerNews, Disqus. https://www.effectivediscu…

Awesome concept on usability testing exchange! This reminds me of the interviewing.io model, which I also highly regarded. I think this sort of karma-enforced-sharing model could work in a lot a fields, but the big disadvantage I anticipate is not having any experts in the mix. Do you have any ideas for how to minimize this disadvantage?

I've been thinking about gamification, like at StackOverflow and StackExchange. There, talented people sometimes spend lots of time helping others. (To get more reputation points?)

Maybe there could be some "high score" list, showcasing the people who have contributed the most, and also have given a high ratio of Like-vote-upvoted feedback. Then people might want to contribute, and include the high-score-presence in their resume / online portfolio.

Or maybe some people to via sth like Patreon would want to pay talented people in low-living-cost-countries, to spend some of their time at Usability Testing Exchange, helping others.

Do you have any thoughts about this or additional ideas? :- )

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#558

Post by daryllxd » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

jesperlang wrote: post #341

I quit what many would consider a successfull job in programming and had a sabbatical year. Moved to a smaller town and down sized everything in spending to the point where I pay $600 per month for housing, food and bills, so living of my savings haven't been an issue at all. I have focused on things like reading (read +40 books in 2017, up from 1-2 per year), wood working, sketching, running and skiing. To keep up m…

Hi I've also recently (re)discovered reading books. What books do you recommend?

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#559

Post by KajMagnus » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

nanoscopic wrote: post #197

Spent the last 9 months on a startup I co-founded, https://carbonstate.com We are producing an ECM system aimed at the SMB market. The short feature list is: - Configuration driven; no coding required to create management systems - Complex schema support ( nested and linked types ) - Automatic data entry/modification form creation - Workflow support - Compiled templating with fragments and support for reverse proxy c…

Do you build content management systems? Both the website and this comment are a bit confusing to me. Maybe doing usability testing of the homepage would be a good idea? to see if people understand what it is about. You can submit your site for free here: https://usability.testing.exchange — it's a feedback exchange place (I'm developing it). Also look at the Alternatives page, there you'll find lots of other places to get even more feedback.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#560

Post by eugmandel » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

imh wrote: post #329

Human computation! Not to be too #hailcorporate, but my job's pretty fun. It's using machine learning and humans together to solve problems. The fields pretty focused on labelling tasks, but there's much more to it. Having a large human workforce backed by a bunch of engineers and data scientists is like a fast-forward button on machine learning. You use humans and computers together to do things we really can't auto…

I understand the excitement :) - working on ML+human workers product too, but in customer support space. It is always fun to talk to people working on similar problems, especially in different markets. Would you like to chat? Please reply to my email (eugene.mandel at gmail) - I am in SF 2-3 times a week.