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Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

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Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#101

Post by LinuxBender »

technological wrote: post #76
loufe wrote: post #72

Underground mining engineer, working in the Canadian far north. I've always been a computer geek, even did some internships as a developer, but I realized needed a career that would pull me out of screens. Still a hobby programmer and love tech. The tech industry has a dynamism and pace that contrasts even modern mining sharply. I'm not sure when I stumbled upon HN but I was hooked immediately. Also helps that HN is…

Wow that’s awesome. Is there any blog which you have where I can learn more about your work and experiences

I am also interested in this area. It is really hard to find miners that make videos on their work. I suspect the foremen probably discourage it. This guy made some videos. [1] I want to get into hobby tunneling. [2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/JoryDion/videos

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#102

Post by acaz »

Industrial engineer, working in emergency medical services in operations research to help optimize the service (i.e. figuring out where to let EMTs take their breaks in a metropolitan area to increase coverage of potential critical calls, short term demand prediction, employee scheduling and planning etc..). Been lurking on HN for a long time, and stumbled on it by chance and got hooked instantly. Like many others said, its a great way to stay on top of tech related issues/topics.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#103

Post by 1ibsq »

amcoastal wrote: post #93
1ibsq wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an undergraduate degree (bachelors). I appreciate the reply, but "just get it done" is easier said than done for me - but you couldn't know:) I do what is possible for me. Sooner than later things get sorted out by themselves when I either make it or they kick me out. I don't know what's next then either way. But you're definitely right, civil eng is quite broad and I have done jobs within it that I was good at…

It took me 9 years to get my UG degree done. You'll get there, don't give up :)

Within civil eng (at least for my uni) students usually don't take more time than they have to. People finish left and right. It's easy for me to overlook the fact that it's just fine if it takes longer. So it's important to just get reminded from outside the bubble that this can in fact be normal. Thank you! :)

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#104

Post by Godel_unicode »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #54
Godel_unicode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... I pay for my masters and academic hobbies in other fields with my tech day job.

Off topic, but is there meaning behind your name or is it just two things you like? (Yes I know who/what Godel and Unicode are)

I don't remember the whole story, but the original username I was going to use was going to be gödel and then something about incompleteness. Since Unicode isn't allowed for usernames here, I changed it to this.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#105

Post by hosh »

TimSchumann wrote: post #45
opinion-is-bad wrote: post #21

California farmer, mostly pistachio and almonds. The farm has been in the family for four generations now and we hope to continue that. I found HN while I worked at Google on self-driving cars from 2014-2018. At least two postings on HN have been direct material impact to me: the first about an autonomous tractor we might be experimenting with soon, and the second about water restrictions in CA that fortunately did n…

Conversation I was having with my dad (a dairy and grain farmer in the midwest) earlier this week ‘I wonder what the market for an open source tractor is?’ Not sure about autonomous, but just something you own, that you have full schematics and design specs for, and can repair yourself — seems like a huge market given the state of things right now.

Were you thinking about this? https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#106

Post by gremloni »

999900000999 wrote: post #9
JesusRobotics wrote: post #3

Currently unemployed. I was studying python which somehow lead me to here. Normally I surf Reddit but I find hacker news to be less toxic in the comments.

I'm in the same boat. I found Reddit to be one of the most hateful communities online. Checkout the Herman Cain award sub if you want proof. In my 20s I wasted a ton of time arguing about politics and even my own life on that site. While 9/10 times I'd find someone fun, the 1/10 was spent absorbing pure vitriol. Ultimately no one cares about what I think or how I choose to live my life. No normal person will spend al…

A sub that makes fun of people for vehemently denying a disease exists and then die from it? I can’t think of something as well deserved.

Now real examples would be subs like the old thedonald, and the myriad of extremely racist subreddits that are allowed to exist unchecked.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#107

Post by 1ibsq »

509engr wrote: post #100
1ibsq wrote: post #77

Student in civil engineering. It's been several years now and still no end in sight. My decision on this profession wasn't very well thought out because I wasn't able to back then. Right now I'm in the position of a gambler who invested a lot and can't really jump of the train. I want to learn coding, but haven't been able to start for quite some time now. But I have interests in tech stuff and that's why it's intere…

Civil engineer here - had a similar situation in undergrad, with an electrical engineering prof trying several times to get me to switch based on my interests. There are a lot of opportunities to do coding and tech stuff in civil engineering, and I think working on big infrastructure projects is way more exciting than building a startup or the next great phone app. You should consider grad school, or at least take so…

Thanks for the advise! Python is in fact what I wanted to start with. But for now I have to focus on exams - including hydraulics and hydrology ;)

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#108

Post by algoatecorn »

My background is a combination of horticulture + molecular biology = plant breeding/genome engineering. I have other prior experiences as well and intend on switching my career once again. I've always been interested in tech and started programming in my younger teen years. My next step will probably be something cloud-related since I love learning about it and believe it's only going to grow exponentially.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#109

Post by dm319 »

Clinical haematologist / cancer researcher here. I work mainly 80% clinical work and try to fit in research into the rest of the week and evenings. My PhD worked on bigger data than could be analysed in the regular biological sciences way (excel + stats software), so I learnt R. That led me down a rabbit hole of learning linux, bash, bit of Go, python etc.. I can't remember how I ended up here. I think maybe the instructor for the Go course mentioned it. I stayed because I find the science-based articles interesting and I like to draw comparisons across different disciplines.

The quality of the discourse is high here, so I'll stay as long as that's the case!

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech professionals on HN?

#110

Post by bjoli »

I am a bassoon player in a professional ochestra. I have been programming since I was 7, and apart from building a few small programs for small companies run out of a garage and one place where I got paid for consulting in a small common lisp project (although I am more of a scheme user these days), very little of what I have written has left any traces online.

Anyway, now I program to relax. Recently I have been working on this: https://git.sr.ht/~bjoli/goof-loop/

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