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Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#341

Post by jesperlang »

I quit what many would consider a successfull job in programming and had a sabbatical year. Moved to a smaller town and down sized everything in spending to the point where I pay $600 per month for housing, food and bills, so living of my savings haven't been an issue at all.

I have focused on things like reading (read +40 books in 2017, up from 1-2 per year), wood working, sketching, running and skiing. To keep up my programming skills I have done a deep dive in new programming languages and fiddling with some side projects. It has been an incredible year for personal development and it has changed my perspective on what things are important in life (sitting in front of a screen 40-60 hours a week not being one of them). I highly recommend everyone to do this at least once in your career!

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#342

Post by sifoo »

JDiculous wrote: post #230

Left $150k software engineering job (well got fired for making video called "9 Ways to cope with having a boring 9-5 job" which somebody found and sent to HR) to make videos about stuff I think is interesting ( https://www.youtube.com/c/JDiculous1 https://www.facebook.com/HonestLogic ), with a slant towards addressing wage slavery, basic income, student loans, capitalism, etc. Still in the early stages, but I'll be h…

You will get the experiences you need to go where you're going; being fired for pointing out obvious is not that bad, you did nothing wrong, it's their shitty karma. Can't you see the irony in doing something like that on facebook? The solution starts with making the right choices yourself.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#343

Post by [deleted] »

jesperlang wrote: post #341

I quit what many would consider a successfull job in programming and had a sabbatical year. Moved to a smaller town and down sized everything in spending to the point where I pay $600 per month for housing, food and bills, so living of my savings haven't been an issue at all. I have focused on things like reading (read +40 books in 2017, up from 1-2 per year), wood working, sketching, running and skiing. To keep up m…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#344

Post by yuvallevental »

taysix wrote: post #313
yuvallevental wrote: post #177

Trying to be the world's first person to be cured from autism. I believe my autism is caused by the shape of my forehead, which puts too much pressure on my muscles. Evidence is here: https://corticalchauvinism.com/2017/11/13/yuval-levental-cra... Also, I have prepared for a potential surgery by getting botox injections in my forehead muscle. So far, my focus at work has dramatically improved: https://corticalchauvin…

This sounds cool! You seem high functioning. I know someone who's low functioning, about grade 2-3 mentality and can't keep conversations going for long. No savant level skills either. How does your work affect people on that end of the spectrum? Do you see any of your work applying to them? Sorry if you've answered any of this in your research. I'll check your site out more tomorrow.

It will have little to no impact on low-functioning autism, unfortunately :(. Researching low functioning autism is far more complicated than the type of research I am doing.

BTW, I am diagnosed as high-functioning, but I am not so high-functioning that I can "pass" for normal or even close to normal in public. That is starting to change though.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#345

Post by comboy »

songzme wrote: post #320

I quit my job as a software engineer at Google early this year to teach people how to code. I started paying people $15/hr to learn so they can make ends meet while learning instead of working at Walmart. I thought about all the missing pieces in my engineering growth and created a curriculum that welcomes students from 0 engineering background and plugs in all the holes that were black boxed to me in my engineering…

This is absolutely awesome. Sounds like a really great way to make the world a better place.

Not everybody is using fb, I hope you'll finish your http://garagescript.org/ website soon because now most links don't seem to be working. When you provide more details I think you may find some people who are willing to donate. E.g. is non-profit registered under garagescript? I couldn't find it. Well at least make contact and linkedin links working now that you are going to get some exposure from HN frontpage.

Got a bit too much into details, but what I meant to say, really great initiative, kudos.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#346

Post by hyeomans »

JDiculous wrote: post #230

Left $150k software engineering job (well got fired for making video called "9 Ways to cope with having a boring 9-5 job" which somebody found and sent to HR) to make videos about stuff I think is interesting ( https://www.youtube.com/c/JDiculous1 https://www.facebook.com/HonestLogic ), with a slant towards addressing wage slavery, basic income, student loans, capitalism, etc. Still in the early stages, but I'll be h…

Videos are pretty funny! Keep it up :D

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#348

Post by thibautx »

songzme wrote: post #320

I quit my job as a software engineer at Google early this year to teach people how to code. I started paying people $15/hr to learn so they can make ends meet while learning instead of working at Walmart. I thought about all the missing pieces in my engineering growth and created a curriculum that welcomes students from 0 engineering background and plugs in all the holes that were black boxed to me in my engineering…

This is awesome! Please keep us posted on where we can donate in the near future.

Re: Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

#349

Post by bcjordan »

I made the leap and partnered up full time with a friend & former coworker on his indie game "Clone Drone in the Danger Zone", a third-person laser-sword-fighter where any part of your body can be sliced off.

We released on Steam[1] Early Access in March, which was a special moment to be a part of (I grew up as a kid playing games on Steam, the process behind game creation used to be a mysterious fascination!)

In 2017 we built and released a ton of fun updates -- a Steam Workshop integration, Twitch Mode & Twitch Extension (where chatters can spawn enemies), and a super ambitious chapter 3 that added AI allies and a multi-part tower-assault adventure with fun scripted/animated moments.

Coming up next we tackle multiplayer. To do that, we first spent a month "burning a pancake" by making a small free multiplayer game called "Long Live Santa!" [2]. Within 3 days, more players had installed that game than the game we'd spent over a year on... it just hit over 100,000 players, just over a couple weeks after its initial release. We were surprised to see the momentum that releasing something for free generates.

It's been a lot of challenging, varied work, with more autonomy and skin in the game than any previous role and I absolutely love it.

Going in to next year we are going full force on adding multiplayer to Clone Drone, using the lessons learned from Long Live Santa to guide us. (& if you've made a multiplayer game before, would love to chat some time and swap notes!)

[1]: http://store.steampowered.com/app/597170/

[2]: http://store.steampowered.com/app/763410/Long_Live_Santa/

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