Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#41

Post by jacquesm »

spydez wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #5

If I were you I'd try to use my cross domain knowledge (a pilot!) to position myself in a niche where there are few competitors, I have a hard time imagining there would be a lot of people that can call themselves programmer/pilot (though on HN for sure we have a few). That seems to be your unique selling point, so try to get as much traction there by recycling your old skills for as much as they're worth. As for men…

Safety critical software is absolutely not the thing to get involved with (especially off the bat)... That and security critical software have mountains of approval to get through before they can be used. The FAA is notoriously old fashioned. Also, I'd personally hate to be responsible for some crash because my flight planning assistance SaaS had a minor, off-by-one bug in it somewhere, or misinterpreted "thar be tor…

It doesn't have to be safety critical to be associated with flying.

I've written code for the aviation industry (fuel estimation programs, one thing you really don't want to mess up with) so I fully understand the ins and outs of that, but a pilots log book has already been mentioned and that would be a nice thing to start out with.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#42

Post by raintrees »

mipnix wrote: post #34
cadr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have to do with the information? Do you have to give it to various 3rd parties or fill out forms with it?

It is a personal record. Very much on the honor system. It is used during interviews as a culling criterion. Must meet certain minimum hours and so on. Would you care to help me build an app as j* suggests?

Suggestion: After you have a reasonable facsimile of a working log for pilots (if you choose to go this route), consider generalizing/expanding for scuba divers - Same kind of honor-system log-book for dives performed. I would imagine there are other disciplines that would benefit, as well...

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#43

Post by 2mur »

mipnix wrote: post #35
jacquesm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphone app ?

I now have a goal. Thank you. ...Now what?

It's definitely been done before [1] but I think that it is a good app to start and then iterate with features while you're learning android. [1] http://androidforums.com/application-requests/25519-airline-...

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#44

Post by seasoup »

Now that you've done some basic programming in C++ and Java, you are in a little bit better position to figure out what kind of programming you want to be doing.

The C family is a language used in corporations for programming applications that we use all the time. Objective C is what it used on iPhone/iPad/iWhatever applications. C is also big in the video game industry.

Java is also used by corporations to develop applications, but it is also used to develop web sites. If you want to use java to build websites there are tons of choices to make about what to learn. Here are some words to research: Tomcat, Spring MVC, Hibernate, Ibatis, GWT. Java is a very heavy weight language, but probably the most commonly used today.

C# is Microsofts answer to Java. Also used in the corporate world, not as popular as java.

Then there are the web programming language: PHP, Ruby, Python. PHP is strictly web programming, while Ruby and Python are used for other things as well. Ruby has a web stack known as Rails, commonly referred to as Ruby on Rails. Python has a web stack known as Django.

If you are programming in C or java, and not on the web then you will be spending lots of time looking at text. If you are programming for the web, you will also need to learn HTML, CSS, and javascript, as well as a javascript library like jQuery and you will be spending lots of your time looking at the browser and lining things up.

You will also probably need to learn SQL at some point, though that can wait if you are programming for the web (Web developer) and probably cannot wait if you are programming off the web.

I come from a web background myself, and would say the easiest place to start, if you want to program for the web, would probably be Ruby on Rails. Learn Rails before learning Ruby. This is an excellent resource:

http://railstutorial.org/

Hope this helps some!

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#45

Post by ketanb »

Facebook has puzzles page. Facebook may hire you, if you can solve their puzzles. I don't work at Facebook and am posting it from their website.

http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php

Just a thought, if you are learning to program anyway, why not try to solve FB puzzles. You may have the job by the time you are done learning.

I did worked at Singapore Airlines and was building Crew Management And Rostering System for pilots. To maintain international flying license, pilots have to fly each and every country once a year and they also have to get retrained in different emergency landing scenarios. As a Pilot, you may know so many problems pilots face due to such stressful environment. You may be able to build meaningful application which can help ease those problems.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#46

Post by spydez »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
spydez wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety critical software is absolutely not the thing to get involved with (especially off the bat)... That and security critical software have mountains of approval to get through before they can be used. The FAA is notoriously old fashioned. Also, I'd personally hate to be responsible for some crash because my flight planning assistance SaaS had a minor, off-by-one bug in it somewhere, or misinterpreted "thar be tor…

It doesn't have to be safety critical to be associated with flying. I've written code for the aviation industry (fuel estimation programs, one thing you really don't want to mess up with) so I fully understand the ins and outs of that, but a pilots log book has already been mentioned and that would be a nice thing to start out with.

True, but you can still fuck up stuff without being DOA-178B (or whatever). My flight planning assistance SaaS example wouldn't be safety critical, I assume.

Just a warning of what to avoid...

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#47

Post by jacquesm »

raintrees wrote: post #42
mipnix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a personal record. Very much on the honor system. It is used during interviews as a culling criterion. Must meet certain minimum hours and so on. Would you care to help me build an app as j* suggests?

Suggestion: After you have a reasonable facsimile of a working log for pilots (if you choose to go this route), consider generalizing/expanding for scuba divers - Same kind of honor-system log-book for dives performed. I would imagine there are other disciplines that would benefit, as well...

Good thinking! There may be many more like that actually. Mountain climbers ? Para jumpers ?

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#48

Post by edge17 »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
raintrees wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggestion: After you have a reasonable facsimile of a working log for pilots (if you choose to go this route), consider generalizing/expanding for scuba divers - Same kind of honor-system log-book for dives performed. I would imagine there are other disciplines that would benefit, as well...

Good thinking! There may be many more like that actually. Mountain climbers ? Para jumpers ?

I was about to suggest mountain climbers. I use some of the services on summitpost (climbers logs etc). The site has a vast amount of information, but it's backend is garbage. I routinely use google to extract information out of the site.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#49

Post by Aegean »

Don't learn C++ as a starter language. C++ and Java are languages that have been mostly evolved from C. C was designed as a convenience tool to replace stack based assembler programming, which is what existed before any of these languages were available. So if you learn C++ first, you will have hard time understanding why there classes, why there is protection, why there are member fields, why inheritence ... the whys will be an endless list and you will never figure it out. If you wanna get that far, buy the C progamming language book and learn C first. In C you will get to understand the roots.

To fast forward and save you some time in programming, learn python. It has all the bells and whistles, and its simple to program.

Read this guy's essay: http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

If I were you I would either write a simple program that you think aviation people might need, or taking the employment path I would go for an aviation related software company like one doing flight simulators.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a mentor?

#50

Post by cadr »

mipnix wrote: post #34
cadr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have to do with the information? Do you have to give it to various 3rd parties or fill out forms with it?

It is a personal record. Very much on the honor system. It is used during interviews as a culling criterion. Must meet certain minimum hours and so on. Would you care to help me build an app as j* suggests?

Not a lot of time right now - sent you an email.
Post reply on HN