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Ask HN: How to go from Web Developer to Robotics Engineer?

3 points by neilsharma ↗ HN
I'm 26 and have been designing and building web or mobile apps for a few years now. It has done well for me; however, 5 years from now, I know I'd be unfulfilled and intellectually bored if I'm still doing the same thing.

I want to develop another engineering skill that is more technical in nature and lets me work on a different set of problems. Currently I'm looking at a combination of Robotics, AI, and agricultural/environmental engineering. I'd like to be able to hack around on my own and still make progress without a large team or expensive equipment, but also have the skills to be employable in the space.

How do I go about doing this? I have a bachelor's degree (Electrical Engineering + Computer Science) from a brand school with some data science exposure, but no experience engineering physical products. Preferably I don't want to go back to school, but haven't found MOOCs to be particularly compelling either (open to recommendations).

5 comments

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anonyfox
Im exactly in the same situation: 27, bachelor in CS/distributed systems, years of deep fullstack experience, multiple languages and many frameworks fluently and ... I'm bored.

I plan to start a masters degree on "information Technology" (technical CS, contains electrical stuff, robotics and AI if you choose), besides my remote job this year. Maybe I do stay in academics afterwards, dunno.

Honestly, I already can see how the bubble of webdev pops in a few years. We can already scaffold whole CRUD apps easily or stick together legoblocks of components, once a computer can translate business usual requirements into standard apps for no costs ... coding gruntwork is easier to automate than other professions.

Since Im living in germany, industrial robotics looks like a good option, alternatively I'll specialize further into AI. I hope this will let me survive comfortably until the UBI finally arrives.

sharemywin
I've been thinking about this myself.

I even bought an arduino and raspberry pi did a few things with them.

Been thinking about on demand companies that could utilize robotics and/or tele-presense robots.

Jack000
coming from a similar background, I think the biggest difference between "robotics"/mechatronics and CS/EE is physical intuition and hands-on skills.

Making small robots isn't very expensive, I'd just go to a hackspace and start building something.

neilsharma
Yeah, I have no physical intuition or hands on skills. I have played around with an arduino or two a few years back, but that's about it.

Recently I've been thinking about setting up my on solar + wind energy generating systems in my yard just for fun. Mostly off the shelf parts that I just need to assemble together.

Any good hackspaces you know of that's accepting for complete beginners? I'm in the SF/Bay Area

Jack000
I think most hackspaces are pretty beginner friendly. I'm not in the Bay area but noisebridge is pretty well-known.