Ask HN: Who isn't in the software industry/not a hacker?

Did you sense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroup_bias

I'm also an actuary, but do some coding in my own time. I'm primarily here due to interest on current technology and programming trends and generally interesting articles.

Our team does a lot of analysis programming in R rather than taking the more common Excel/VBA approach. This allows common practices in software development such as version control tools (and the collaboration they can help with), testing, deployment strategies, etc, to be a major part of the usual workflow that would otherwise be missing from the usual speadsheet world so exposure to HN helps promote this in my mind as good practice.

The main draw of HN for me is the consistently high quality of posts and comments. I can be sure that were I to see the same content posted across general news sites, or other aggregators such as Reddit, then HN would be the only place I'd care to look and be certain that I'd also be learning plenty (often more than the original article) from the HN comments alone.

I'm not in the software industry per se, but was. Up until last August I was running my own software development company that had just taken a big hit when our biggest client pulled out with no real warning.

Fast forward to today, I'm now a qualified secondary school teacher in the UK, teaching Business, Computing and Japanese. I get the urge to come back to full-time programming from time to time, but genuinely love being out of 'burnout' mode.

I really enjoy coming here because I still love keeping on top of tech and entrepreneur news, want to stay ahead of the curve, and hey, you never know, I might find a company that is looking to 'disrupt' secondary education in a way that I 100% believe in. Haven't seen it yet, but some companies are getting close (Khan Academy, looking at you!).

It also keeps me from spiraling into my "I'm not doing enough!" mentality that I have for myself, and inspires the wantrepreneur side of me.

    Our team does a lot of analysis programming in R rather than taking the more 
    common Excel/VBA approach. This allows common practices in software development 
    such as version control tools (and the collaboration they can help with), 
    testing, deployment strategies, etc, to be a major part of the usual workflow 
    that would otherwise be missing from the usual speadsheet world so 
    exposure to HN helps promote this in my mind as good practice.

One nice trick your average actuary won't come up with is recursively exporting all your VBA code. The model I'm building is one big .xlsm referencing .xla's referencing other .xla's. By selecting the .xlsm in the VBA IDE we can export all code to a folder (with sub folders for every part) and put this in version control.

Unfortunately, unit testing remains difficult in Basic. I try to control the problems caused by a lack of test by regularly regressing the enormous amounts of output we have. If things that shouldn't change, change we know we have a problem. Of course, this testing can be automated.

At the risk of seeming condescending, I'd like to compliment you on your writing: The ability to express one's self so clearly and effectively is rare, though perhaps more common on HN than elsewhere, and the ability to do so as a teenager is rarer still.

Yes, perhaps I draw great conclusions from three sentences, but they are three well-constructed, articulate, and pithy compound sentences. I fancy that I can hear your voice as I read your words, and having a voice is something many writers never achieve.

I strongly recommend that you write every day, even if only for your own purposes and even if you dispose of what you have written. Regardless of your industry or vocation, the ability to express yourself, to express complex thoughts cleanly and clearly, will serve you well the rest of your days.