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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 947 posts

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

#391

Post by philipkglass »

rightbyte wrote: post #367
sixstringtheory wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about the 1800C furnace that melts sand into the silicon for the solar panel I wonder if a process similar to that used for molten salt batteries, using reflected, concentrated sunlight, could be used to melt sand into what is needed for more solar panels, electronics etc, and use the stored energy while it cools off, essentially combining the processes? And of course for other [s]melting processes powered by f…

Why not just use an electrical furnace and power that with solar power?

The furnaces for making crude silicon are already powered by electricity. So are the Siemens process reactors for refining silicon into solar and electronic grades. So are the Czochralski crystal pullers used to turn refined silicon into mono-crystalline boules for manufacturing wafers.

"Silicon processing: from quartz to crystalline silicon solar cells"

https://www.pyrometallurgy.co.za/Pyro2011/Papers/083-Xakalas...

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

#392

Post by nextos »

dev_dull wrote: post #233
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…

The key to these types of solutions is always to follow the 80/20 rule. For example, it’s foolish to say and attempt “I will automate all of your data entry people” because there will always be weird idiosyncrasies that are better fit for humans. You will dash yourself against the rocks trying to get a “100% complete” solution. Instead, create software that allows 1 person to do the job of 5. You create massive busin…

True. In the same spirit, I'd also add record linkage to automated data entry. It's a big problem both if your previous data is noisy or your automated solution doesn't transcribe some fields correctly.

A simple probabilistic programming solution can work really well.

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

#394

Post by mtnGoat »

dcolkitt wrote: post #345
screye wrote: post #273

ML for healthcare. The whole industry is so far behind everything else, it is not even funny. Problem is, Just like Airbnb or Uber, the biggest road blocks are not technological, they are organizational and political. It is entirely possible, we might need some major privacy / security related leaps in ML to convince the medical industry to adopt it fully. ML in movies and rendering. Deep Fakes is just an amateur's t…

Healthcare tech has been the "next big area" for the past 40 years. Maybe this time is different, but historically it never pans out. Healthcare's an extremely regulated, extremely change-averse area of the economy where entrenched insiders will always close ranks to protect their own.

the sales lifecycle in healthcare is a tough nut to crack, most healthcare orgs arent reviewing software every year, they are signing multi year contracts and allergic to change(for a number of systemic reasons). Plus the conglomeration of syndicates has made fewer clients to sell to, at least on the higher end). There are companies making fortunes in the space for sure, but I think many just sell to mckesson after reaching a decent size.

It is 100% a field that needs disrupting... someone will figure it out and become very wealthy.

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

#395

Post by Delk »

jhallenworld wrote: post #353
1-6 wrote: post #337

Graphical Programming - You have an ever increasing number of people needing to perform computational tasks but lack education in coding. As WYSIWYG/GUI transformed personal computers, the GUI will eventually transform the way we program as well.

This exists, it's called LabVIEW. I make a money by replacing horrible LabVIEW-based systems with nice text-based ones (Python / C / whatever- all are better than LabVIEW). LabVIEW is ok if your virtual instrument fits on one screen. Anything larger and you are better off using a conventional programming language. So here is one program with graphical programming: how do you make it compatible with GIT / source contr…

I don't know LabVIEW, but I can see how a naive or even a somewhat informed attempt at something like that could lead to, ahem, suboptimal results.

I guess you could, in principle, replace text-based code with visual diagrams, but the essential requirement for logical rigor would remain. That's just part of the essential complexity in software.

Replacing code with visual diagrams might make things easier for some people since understanding strict logical rigor and the ability to write code aren't the same thing, but in the end I don't think the difficult part of programming is actually learning to write code.

I'm also not sure at all that you'd get very good productivity setting all those details right in the diagram through a GUI unless the interface were really well designed, with a liberal employment of keyboard shortcuts. GUIs are faster than CLIs at many things, but I'm not sure setting programming-level details is one of those. You'd probably need to employ keyboard shortcuts or something similar quite liberally, and learning those well wouldn't be too far from learning to write the code.

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

#396

Post by antisemiotic »

topkai22 wrote: post #29

To borrow a term from Microsoft, "Intelligent Edge." With the shift to the cloud, we are finding there are still many scenarios that should start local for latency, bandwidth, or legal considerations. Organizations still want those scenarios to be easy to manage though. An example might be in store retail analytics- a set up with a bunch of cameras that can detect what people are touching or otherwise interested in.…

>An example might be in store retail analytics- a set up with a bunch of cameras that can detect what people are touching or otherwise interested in.

Because the one thing desperately needed in this world is even more surveillance?

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

#397

Post by BubRoss »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #313
peterangular wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SendKeys Holy cow why didn't I know about this 6 months ago =| VBA is something I have had to reluctantly learn. It's a horrid/ancient language. Sorry if someone gets offended at that but to someone who uses a lot of modern development languages/tools it's just very very difficult with near-zero "nice to haves"... you just end up taking this huge lib of code around with you with functions like "inArray" etc. > As a…

Is anyone aware of a good resource to learn VBA? All the resources I've seen online are either tutorials for very quick hacks, or assume you have 0 programming knowledge. I would love a "VBA for people who are familiar with at least one other programming language".

You don't have to learn VBA to do this, you can just include windows.h in C and call the SendKeys function.

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

#398

Post by shafyy »

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 run a VR startup so I'm biased, but: AR and VR. Different side of the same coin. But first (next 5-10 years) VR will be more mainstream, because it's easier to solve from a technological point of view.

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

#399

Post by pacoWebConsult »

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…

I began working in RPA this year and I completely agree. Tremendous potential but also a lot of buzzword-driven hype in the space. I think the main players need to work harder on bringing world-class engineering and best-practices to the community, since the vast majority of developers that are getting into this are not really advancing the field and instead slapping crap together until their 'bot' works. Why are most automation projects relegated to bare-bones budgets and short timeframes? Potential clients i have engaged have a very short-sighted view of automation possibilities in their businesses, and aren't open to the possibilities beyond what they think should be done by a bot instead of their employees.

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

#400

Post by scruple »

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…

Currently automating a lot of on-boarding process at work. It's been eye opening. What it's really shown me is how very little expertise we have around all of these solutions, SaaS products, etc... that the company uses. From Tableau to Salesforce to our accounting software, it's a mess. It's put myself and my team into a unique position to gain a lot of mind share, especially when it comes to cleaning a lot of the inefficiencies up. That said, I don't think we're making anyone redundant, or cutting anyone out of the equation in a negative way -- none of the people who are currently tasked with a lot of this work were ever supposed to be doing it, trained on it, etc...
Post reply on HN