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Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

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51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#51

Nest is using both C (for embedded Linux on the thermostat) and Python (some of the API services) they are also hiring for lots of positions, some are listed at nest.com/careers

Nest looks really cool and I like the idea of having a physical (as opposed to virtual) product. Are you interested in hiring any junior engineers? Feel free to drop me a line (my email is in my profile) or leave your email here, I'd love to chat.

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#52
post #40

At metalayer.com we use Python heavily for our web app and some C for backend/scalability stuff. We're also hiring. Would love to chat.

I checked out the website, but I didn't see a jobs page. I'd be interested in chatting too, so feel free to drop me an email (my email can be found in my profile) or leave yours here.

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I'm hiring developers, when they tell me they only want to work in certain languages, it's almost always a red flag in terms of their overall problem-solving ability. Just my experience though.

What about if they say they are only fluent in certain languages at the moment while having a basic knowledge in the languages that you use? Do you look more for ability to solve computer science and discrete math problems?

Pretty much. I don't really care if you know the languages we use because you'll pick it up in the first couple of weeks on the job. People who can really solve problems are rare.

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SevOne's careers page says that a Bachelor's degree is a requirement Don't let this stop you. Every. If you honestly think you have the skills for the job after reading the description, seek it out. Let them determine if you are right for the position. Don't be the no in your life.

> Don't be the no in your life. I feel like this is from the movie Yes, Man! That aside, I take your advice to heart. I don't want to be the no in my life. :)

It's not. At least, I've never seen the movie. I forgot where I heard that. So I googled it.

In a search looking for that exact quote, I came up with only a few links. All from either comments I made previously or a blog post.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504632

That was where I originally used it.

I was proud of it, mostly because it was short and to the point. I'm usually not short and to the point.

Anyways, in writing about this on my blog, I had a wonderful surprise happen.

http://www.jasonlotito.com/advice/sometimes-i-amaze-myself/

From his LinkedIn profile, I take it he never got/took the job. But, he seems to be doing well.

But yeah, I think it's good advice.

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you write the libraries yourself? is it libsvm with a python wrapper? I'm curious

Definitely influenced by a few existing libraries (libsvm, svmlight etc.) but ultimately custom built to really ramp up performance and scaling. Our customers throw the Twitter firehose at us, so we need to be able to analyze data quickly.

Sibling comment is impressed, but I'm skeptical that you've improved libsvm. Sorry, can't help it. :)

Can you speak a bit about how you optimized it? I took libsvm to be fairly optimized as far as SVM libraries go...

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#56

The server side code of http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ is almost entirely Python with a small amount of C. There's one particular bit of data processing that gets a couple of orders of magnitude speedup by writing the code in C rather than Python. It involves lots of loops and indexes, and it's possible there's a faster way to do it in Python, but I couldn't think of one.

I've been considering getting a bike for some time now. It should be in the budget soon, so I'll bookmark your app and use it some time. Thanks!

Thanks. You might want to check out Strava too.

My site is focused on the niche of "serious" cyclists who use power meters. The three main ones are PowerTap, Quarq and SRM, none of which are cheap (you can get a PowerTap wheel for about $1k, and that's the cheapest). They're widely used by competitive cyclists, and as somebody who loves numbers, I highly recommend them (power data is the most revealing data that can be collected on a bike), but the vast majority of bikes don't have them (yet).

I'm not trying to dissuade you from using my site, but you might be more satisfied with Strava. That said, it's possible to use both — rides uploaded to my site can be automatically uploaded to Strava.

(I'm going to remake the front page to make it more informative soon.)

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely influenced by a few existing libraries (libsvm, svmlight etc.) but ultimately custom built to really ramp up performance and scaling. Our customers throw the Twitter firehose at us, so we need to be able to analyze data quickly.

Sibling comment is impressed, but I'm skeptical that you've improved libsvm. Sorry, can't help it. :) Can you speak a bit about how you optimized it? I took libsvm to be fairly optimized as far as SVM libraries go...

its possible he is using a specialized kernel or something, or some other edge use case that would make optimizations more feasible

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely influenced by a few existing libraries (libsvm, svmlight etc.) but ultimately custom built to really ramp up performance and scaling. Our customers throw the Twitter firehose at us, so we need to be able to analyze data quickly.

Sibling comment is impressed, but I'm skeptical that you've improved libsvm. Sorry, can't help it. :) Can you speak a bit about how you optimized it? I took libsvm to be fairly optimized as far as SVM libraries go...

Yeah, in terms of performance "improved" is the wrong term. We've tailored things more to our use cases, especially since we need feature weighting and multi classification, rather than simply binary classification.

Re: Ask HN: What startups use C and Python?

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sibling comment is impressed, but I'm skeptical that you've improved libsvm. Sorry, can't help it. :) Can you speak a bit about how you optimized it? I took libsvm to be fairly optimized as far as SVM libraries go...

Yeah, in terms of performance "improved" is the wrong term. We've tailored things more to our use cases, especially since we need feature weighting and multi classification, rather than simply binary classification.

Very cool! I geek out over SVM optimizations and tweaks--have you collected your work anywhere (post? HN comment?) by any chance?
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