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Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#31

Post by z3phyr »

moab wrote: post #9
z3phyr wrote: post #7

Real time raytracing

Can you elaborate? I’m not familiar with the current state of graphics research. Can a high end GPU today do this, and if not, how far are the fastest high-quality algorithms from realtime today?

A high end GPU today (like GTX 10 series) can absolutely stun! Check this out,

http://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracinggems/unofficial_R... [33MB PDF]

It sheds light on some ray tracing techniques with the focus on the new RTX API with DirectX12

Real time rendering portal page generally my goto for checking out new stuff in graphics and now they have a Raytracing section https://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracing.html

I am on phone right now, and will try to put more material as soon as I get back to my workstation!

Edit: Courtesy Onion2k

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#33

Post by onion2k »

z3phyr wrote: post #31
moab wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I’m not familiar with the current state of graphics research. Can a high end GPU today do this, and if not, how far are the fastest high-quality algorithms from realtime today?

A high end GPU today (like GTX 10 series) can absolutely stun! Check this out, http://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracinggems/unofficial_R... [33MB PDF] It sheds light on some ray tracing techniques with the focus on the new RTX API with DirectX12 Real time rendering portal page generally my goto for checking out new stuff in graphics and now they have a Raytracing section https://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracin…

Note to users on mobile - link is a 33mb pdf.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#34

Post by mamcx »

erikerikson wrote: post #20

Event sourcing. See dataintensive.net TL;DR - rip the writeahead log out of databases and materialize not just SQL commands but events yourself, returning control to reality rather than systems.

I think in the same lines (I'm building a relational lang http://tablam.org) and think a modern RDBMS could be made alike:

    command  "city.define miami" |> event pre-process (ie: validations and transformations!) |> write-ahead log |> fire-observers: [post log for later OR block writes]
The idea is to put some of the stored procedures in the "event pre-process" before commit to write-ahead. In the "fire-observers" steps is possible to directly commit to a table (sync) and get immediate feedback (ie: primary key duplicate) OR store the log to be processed later.

The idea is that is possible to send "events" that are not necessarily "insert into table" or similar, just pure business stuff. BUT still possible to operate as always!

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#35

Post by rubicon33 »

d4mi3n wrote: post #17

Security and privacy. Demand for security folks is white-hot right now, and the need for better security products continues to grow. I've been seeing a lot of companies in adjacent spaces making headway into the security domain as well—ML assisted intrusion detection and cloud-centric security tooling come to mind. In a broader sense, I think more governments and regulatory bodies are starting to take cybersecurity m…

This is the most "for sure" answer in this thread. If I had to bet on any one of these answers being true, this is the answer I would bet on.

Security has always been a big deal, but in light of all the attacks we're seeing lately, there's likely going to be REGULATIONS involved, that may mean demand for these jobs skyrockets.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#36

Post by hwoolery »

dlivingston wrote: post #18

I have a hunch that the Next Big Thing (TM) will be augmented reality: though the technology is currently in its infancy, when compelling AR glasses are finally released (Apple is rumored to be released theirs in 2020) I think that it will have a massive impact. AR frameworks are a dime a dozen, but if you're an Apple person look into ARKit + Swift.

I agree -- on top of this, I think machine learning will play an important role. The power of machine learning + AR creates some interesting possibilities. You can check out our website for some examples https://www.2020cv.com

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#38

Post by peterangular »

I work in this field so I'm incredibly biased: automated business solutions that cut entry-level data employees out of the equation. You save TONS on the bottom line, and cut out human-driven process that is error prone and difficult to manage. I'm talking about things beyond "API-driven dev", more in the realms of Puppeteer, Microsoft Office automation, screen-scraping (mouse/keyboard), etc. I make API's out of things that other devs balk at - and trust me, it has a lot of market value.

This isn't as "up and coming" as all of the other items people are mentioning, but I'd put it on a "always increasing in popularity" trajectory due to an ever-increasing need. It's not really sexy or interesting, but there will always be a HUGE market for the things that I can do =)

I will warn people that "up and coming" tech is often fad-based and has boom and bust cycles, and personally I'd rather be working for a paycheck then waiting to win the lottery in this regard.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#39

Post by lincolnq »

moab wrote: post #9
z3phyr wrote: post #7

Real time raytracing

Can you elaborate? I’m not familiar with the current state of graphics research. Can a high end GPU today do this, and if not, how far are the fastest high-quality algorithms from realtime today?

Nvidia has a popular series of "RTX" gpus released in the last year, which are billed as having real-time ray-tracing capability of some sort. It is not exactly clear to me what the best ways of making use of this are yet; if you want to path trace a whole scene it's still absurdly expensive / low frame rate (check out Quake II RTX) but there are a small number of AAA games released in the past year which are making use of real-time raytracing in small amounts for more subtle graphical improvements.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#40

Post by bcrosby95 »

lewisjoe wrote: post #27

Unpopular opinion: Domain driven stack. We have been living in the golden era of software industry, thanks to Moore's law. We were able to afford RISC (= general purpose CPU arch), general purpose operating systems, general purpose languages, general purpose databases etc all because the hardware was going to evolve and get faster anyway. Now with Moore's law showing signs of death, the future for better computing wo…

I just wanted to clarify your example. When you say cloud applications, I assume you mean applications written to run a cloud, as opposed to running IN a cloud?

Because if it's the latter, that doesn't sound like a domain driven stack to me.

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