Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#21

Post by space_ghost » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #5

There are downsides to this. The early parts of my resume read like a list of major software project disasters of the 1990s. Among other things, I worked on Taligent OS and WorkplaceOS. (Never heard of them? That's my point.) As a result of chasing interesting problems (and a stint as a university sysadmin), my salary history led me to be significantly underpaid for most of my career.

The only screenshot [0] I can find of TaligentOS looks remarkably like The BeOS. Did some TaligentOS guys move on to produce the BeOS?

[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7Gi8GgW0AAoguu.png

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#22

Post by gampleman » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #19

gampleman wrote: post #8

As someone who has spent their entire career working on interesting problems using boring technology, and now work on an interesting problem using interesting technology, I can only recommend the latter.

Can you elaborate on how/why you came to that conclusion?

Even interesting jobs involve a fair amount of rote work, doing it using tech you enjoy working with makes that go a lot easier.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#23

Post by redis_mlc » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #17

commandlinefan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author makes it sound as if "interesting" tech only exists for the sake of being interesting, but interesting tech becomes interesting because it (purports to be) a better way of solving problems than whatever the old way was. I'm old enough to have worked on Cobol at one point, and Cobol is "boring" but it's also bad, because it was designed around the constraints that existed at the time it was created (as was…

> I'm old enough to have worked on Cobol at one point So, how much money would 'they' have to offer you to go back to working on Cobol. they meaning a hypothetical company that says they can't find any Cobol programmers.

COBOL is an ok language.

The problem is that you'd be updating very old programs, handling money to the cent, and dealing with systems that likely have had multiple hardware and OS migrations over the decades.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#24

Post by one_off_comment » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

In my experience, it's fun to work on interesting problems and it's fun to work with interesting tech. But it quickly becomes overwhelming if you try to do both at the same time.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#25

Post by Existenceblinks » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #7

Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?

And many times, better solution is not to use software at all. People don't need to leave Excel or Wordpress at all. I don't even think using paper is a problem. They have pros and cons. "solution looking for problems" is actually accurate, ironically.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#26

Post by hirvi74 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #18

legerdemain wrote: post #7

Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?

Man, I sure am glad Curtis and the Wright brothers didn't take this stance after Lord Kelvin claimed "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" before they proved him wrong less than 20 years later. Or NASA when Lee Deforest claimed flight to the moon was impossible "regardless of all future advances." Or when Einstein claimed ""There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.…

> when Einstein claimed ""There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable."

Not to be pedantic, but was Einstein incorrect at that time/in the future? Were there any actual indications that nuclear energy would be obtainable at that time?

Einstein didn't seem to say, "Obtaining nuclear energy is absolutely impossible, and can never be achieved." All he said was that there is not the _slightest indication_.

I am sorry if this comes off as being semantical, but I just want to make sure I am not misinterpreting you or what Einstein said.

As for the other points, yes. Those were great examples.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#27

Post by smt88 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #7

Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?

Most people in software seem to create interesting technology that sells ads, so your sarcastic examples sound a lot better to me.

I'm currently building a company that is replacing Excel at some of the biggest commercial real estate firms, which is "impossible" by your standards.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#28

Post by smt88 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

one_off_comment wrote: post #24

In my experience, it's fun to work on interesting problems and it's fun to work with interesting tech. But it quickly becomes overwhelming if you try to do both at the same time.

The thing is that interesting problems are never just tech problems. That's why they still exist. There's still a massive, complex human side to those problems.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#29

Post by nickjj » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #7

Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?

Indeed, there's lots of great problems to solve in this space.

If anyone is interested I recorded a 90 minute podcast with a lead developer + ops engineer who created a custom electronic medical record system for an Ophthalmology clinic (eye care).

It's at: https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/99-a-custom-electron...

We talked all about using Rails to help consolidate 9 separate 3rd party solutions into a monolithic server rendered Rails app that the clinic uses internally to manage all of their patients. We also chatted about transitioning from Elastic Beanstalk to self managed EC2 instances to using Kubernetes with EKS.

Re: Work on interesting problems. Not interesting tech

#30

Post by MontyCarloHall » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

legerdemain wrote: post #7

Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?

I was talking to my physio today (doing fine thanks for asking), and she was fed up about having to prove that a client had not paid her - manually matching payments into her bank account with appointments etc. It wasted an hour of her time or more. Now the heart of that is 5 lines of python. It could be written by anyone after a days "starting from zero" coding experience. But actually solving that in real world is…

> usually because proprietary code is not a[s] profitable as proprietary data

Bingo. This is why Google et al. would never sell your data; they just keep it for themselves and merely sell to advertisers the ability to precisely target you (“pick a demographic down to the shampoo brand and we can target your ads to it”). But those advertisers (or anyone else) will never see a single iota of your data. It’s simply too valuable.