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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?

#111

Post by nostrademons »

pjc50 wrote: post #87
aey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is the internet in 1996, and you are telling me I missed the train because SUN Microsystems is going to be the first trillion dollar company.

.. eventually going bust and being bought by Oracle?

I think that's the point. Existing cryptocurrencies are very likely to get eclipsed by new competitors that actually solve the problems people face with them. And if you want to have a big impact on humanity, solving those problems is a fruitful area. The financial system that'll pay for our retirements likely hasn't been invented yet.

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

#113

Post by c3534l »

It seems like there's a lot of profit in synthesizing existing technonogies, like decades old tech and new stuff (bitcoin, uber, neural nets + GPUs). And also overlooked are dying industries. They tend to consolidate on their way down, which allows a new competitor to buy them up. A lot of software is changing its business and pricing model, so it would allow a smaller firm to offer up an alternative to what established players are doing. Software used to be the big next thing where everything and anything was new and innovative. People got used to thinking of it in those terms and now fail to see it as the established industry it is, chasing high risk investments that aren't even going to be that high reward. There may not be a next Google, Facebook, or Amazon. You may have to look for another industry entirely if you want to get in early to become an industry giant.

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

#114

Post by jl2718 »

I see a huge trend coming in “DIY Medicine”. Doctors, insurers, and the FDA are way too expensive for mere gatekeeping, and technology is developing new treatments and dropping equipment costs an order of magnitude faster than they can respond. For example, I can buy all of the equipment necessary for a PRP injection for less than the cost of a single treatment, and the doctor that does it knows no more about how to do it than any nurse that took a weekend course. There are also many simple drugs that aren’t used because they either can’t be patented or because the cost is too low. Many of these treatments obviate the need for much more expensive and dangerous treatments with questionable outcomes, like surgery and high-priced drugs. Doctors know that the price of the most effective treatments may not sustain their profession. So if we’re not there already, it’s coming to the point where the medical industry does more harm than good, and gray market treatments will give far better outcomes for an order magnitude lower cost.

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

#115

Post by rapsey »

windsurfer wrote: post #93
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.

What value does augmented reality add to anything?

If you don't need a monitor, you don't need the computer as we know it today. Combine it with a brain computer interface and you throw away the keyboard and mouse as well. Subsequently you also throw away all the OS'es as we know them. AR/VR is a toy today. In the future our computers and mobile phones might look as arcane as an eniac.

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

#116

Post by yodon »

elcomet wrote: post #98
windsurfer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does augmented reality add to anything?

I'm thinking of assisting drivers. Projecting stuff into the road to guide the driver, or warn him when there are dangerous objects.

I'm not sure the thing people have been doing perfectly well for 100 years without AR glasses that billions of dollars are being invested in making people not need to do at all is the place to launch your AR dream company

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

#117

Post by luch »

strken wrote: post #69
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…

Not sure what more recent xboxes are like, but the original xbox was a cut down windows 2000 running on Intel and Nvidia. It was really close to commodity hardware and software.

the current Xbox is running a Windows 10 (one kernel design) while the PS4 run a patched up FreeBSD.

Only Nintendo bothers with writing custom kernels, and historically Sony with the PS2 having exotic "Cell" processor units.

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

#118

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

peterangular wrote: post #38

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 thin…

One of the most useful programs I made at my last job was an automated letters program.

We had a whole slew of standard letters that we'd send out, most of the time requests would go to the typing pool (yes, this was a thing) that were basically "Do letter ABC for client XYZ", where letter ABC was a standard thing that always went to the same recipient.

I built a screen in our system that let you tell it to request a letter (only the simple letters, obviously), it would pull the relevant data out of the client file and write the request out as an XML file. On the other side of things, a VB6 program would watch a folder for those XML files to appear and go through OLE Automation (as it was called back then) to make Word fill in the letter, print it, print an envelope, and save the result in the client's folder.

This kind of thing is an absolutely incredible time saver.

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

#119

Post by dlojudice »

tools for micro-entrepreneurs: with the growth of automation (e.g. RPA and AI) and the consequent decline of the world middle class, many people are being forced to work informally as a food deliverer or be an uber driver. others will become micro-entrepreneurs (solo-entrepreneurs for many). the opportunity is that these entrepreneurs will need all kinds of specialized tools during their journey (payment, marketing, finance, distribution, etc.)

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

#120

Post by somatic »

windsurfer wrote: post #93
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.

What value does augmented reality add to anything?

Adtech. Hence Facebook/Oculus.
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