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Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#61

Post by Curious42 »

hyperpallium wrote: post #56
Curious42 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a really good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cosqlfqrpFA Also, to answer your question, not it's not the same as a website because it will be a native Android app with the ability to communicate with the Android OS, like any other Android app. The possibility of things — in terms of improved UX — that you can accomplish with instant apps are infinite. It all comes down to how you want to use it.

BTW You can do this kind of thing now, with classloading. I'm doing developmemt on my phone, and it's far faster to load new class versions than install a new app version. Google will have a framework around this. Full OS access could mean permissions per page - could be awkward or ok. Much of the app vs. webpage debate here is the same as always - though offline advantage is gome.

Never looked into Classloader until now. Very interesting. Can a loaded class also be an extension of a view or an activity?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#62

Post by pdimitar »

siddboots wrote: post #28
lngnmn wrote: post #5

That in the past people used to deceive (delude) themselves and other fools around them with theology, speculations and metaphysics, today they do the same with statistics, probability and abstract models.

This seems incredibly cynical in light of the current breakthroughs in machine learning, and probabilistic modelling. It really feels to me as though the AI revolution isn't something to dream about anymore, because we're living in it. I find it difficult to deny the achievement of tangible progress that is implied by, for example, the self-driving car.

UNINFORMED OPINION by a side-watcher: I don't feel there's any AI revolution at all. We simply have slightly more efficient deep learning networks due to better hardware.

Most of the time it feels like the people who are somewhat successful in those branches simply got lucky by randomly mixing elements A, B and C in an unexpected manner and boom -- magic.

In other words, things progress painfully slow and almost always it's due to intuitive shower/sleep revelations than anything else.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#63

Post by pipio21 »

In my company we work using computers for real world applications, in the physical world:

Regenerative medicine: understanding DNA code and restoring cells and organs, making eternal youth possible. It will take decades of hard work.

Ending cancer: We are studding virus mutations, so we could attack them without invasive techniques.

Nuclear fusion: We are simulating plasma physics. This is going to be enormous in ten years or so imho.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#64

Post by pdimitar »

joelthelion wrote: post #9

Deep learning is a game changer for image processing (that should be fairly obvious to anyone reading HN). It still requires a lot of expertise to use, but it's enabling people to do things that were previously extremely difficult or even impossible to achieve.

Would you be up to pointing us at open-source tools with which people can do these things? And a few examples?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#66

Post by donaltroddyn »

onion2k wrote: post #19

My field is web development, and, to be honest, the most exciting thing going on is that more people are starting to complain about the complexity of development. Hopefully this will lead to people slowing down and learning how to write better web software. As an example, one survey ( https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/frontend-tooling-survey-2016-... ) put the number of developers who don't use any test tools at almost…

Yeah, this is one area where webdev is way behind other fields, and i think we're going to see lots of new tooling in this area soon.

We're currently working on a way to help devs test web app functionality and complete user journeys without having to actually write tests in Selenium or whatever. The idea to is let devs write down what they want to test in English ("load the page", "search for a flight", "fill the form", "pay with a credit card", etc), then we'll use NLP to discern intent, and we have ML-trained models to actually execute the test a browser.

You can give us arbitrary assertions, but we also have built-in tests for the page actually loading, the advertising tags you use, page performance, some security stuff (insecure content, malware links). At the end we hand you back your test results, along with video and perf stats. It’s massively faster than writing Selenium, and our tests won’t break every time an XPATH or ID changes.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#67

Post by FLGMwt »

As a .NET dev, .NET Core is pretty exciting.

We're porting a sizable application to .Net Core so we can be on Linux and save cost and time on instance launch.

I'm writing an in-depth blog post series about the process because I haven't found any significant migration stories. I'm hoping it will help a lot of people through the process.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#68

Post by lisivka »

pwython wrote: post #52
onion2k wrote: post #19

My field is web development, and, to be honest, the most exciting thing going on is that more people are starting to complain about the complexity of development. Hopefully this will lead to people slowing down and learning how to write better web software. As an example, one survey ( https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/frontend-tooling-survey-2016-... ) put the number of developers who don't use any test tools at almost…

I've been interviewing junior/intermediate frontend candidates for the past few months now. 90% don't use any test tools, and their biggest complaint is their current employer forcing a new framework/library for the sake of being bleeding edge. While interesting to them, it turns out most of them really just want to see what they can do with vanilla JS.

Why you expect that junior developer (someone with very little or no development experience) will use a test tool or any other development technique? I expect that junior developer in software field should be able to program only.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#69

Post by RileyKyeden »

I do electronic music. The rise of platforms like Bandcamp and Patreon, and the abundance of high quality free/inexpensive tools and guides is raising the bar for quality in independent music, and making it easier for more people to get paid in whatever niches they prefer (vs. going for a mass audience).

Re: Ask HN: What is the most exciting development in your field right now?

#70

Post by devwastaken »

lisivka wrote: post #68
pwython wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been interviewing junior/intermediate frontend candidates for the past few months now. 90% don't use any test tools, and their biggest complaint is their current employer forcing a new framework/library for the sake of being bleeding edge. While interesting to them, it turns out most of them really just want to see what they can do with vanilla JS.

Why you expect that junior developer (someone with very little or no development experience) will use a test tool or any other development technique? I expect that junior developer in software field should be able to program only.

>Why you expect that junior developer (someone with very little or no development experience)

I don't think thats the definition of a junior developer. Test tools are apart of building software, you should be hiring devs that have created projects that use tests of some sort, if not with the technology you're using.

>I expect that junior developer in software field should be able to program only.

I don't know how you can have little to no dev experience and know how to program.

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