Ask HN: What's your favorite programmer niche?

Okay, I'll byte.

I love almost every aspect of computing, from software to hardware.

Distributed systems, networking, single-machine vertical scaling, graphics programming, statistics and ML, NLP, vision, frontend.

Also love server hardware, grew up water-cooling and overclocking systems in the late nineties and early 00s.

I also find it fulfilling to help friends and family resolve their computer problems.

I'd like to learn more about embedded systems, I fantasize about creating my own devices stop esp32, but haven't gotten close to having time to explore this yet.

I will learn and use whatever language it takes to get the outcome I wish :)

I will also say that as I'm getting a bit older, I'm a little sick of the physically boring aspect of sitting in front of a computer for many hours on end. No longer appealing.

Cheers.

My favorite programming niche is SEO optimization. I really like optimizing pages and see the traffic grow.

Blockchain/smart contracts, Lisp, reverse engineering.

Tinkering with microcontrollers is probably the most satisfying, because it really challenges you to understand exactly what is going on at all times, right down to the electrical level.

Developing for retro hardware can be fun too, for similar reasons.

OS kernel programming. Modern Linux is too complicated for me, so I pick something smaller that can be easily understood by reading docs for a few hours: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html

You'll see various folks publish their xv6 modifications on Github.

BTW, my daily work is mobile app dev (mostly Kotlin, sometimes Flutter). Totally unrelated, eh?

My favorite subgenre is when my commit looks like:

    3 files changed, 35 insertions(+), 562 deletions(-)

Early 90s 3D engines. Raycasting, sprite scaling, SNES mode 7, voxels, early flight/space sims.

1) Cryptography done right - instead of blindly reading & using algorithms, figure out how people got there. Requires some math background, progress is very slow, but the reward is many "ahaaa!" moments.

2) Trying/inspecting all sorts of Lisps out there. There are so many crazy ideas tried and implemented over the last 40-50 years that IMHO, any new modern language feature probably already exists in some form in some Lisp compiler or interpreter.

Writing rollback netcode for games. It's difficult, and often frustrating, when you're in the thick of it, but when you get things working it's incredibly satisfying.

Since last year I've been using Pixi.js (https://pixijs.com/) to create an app that puts video meetings into a 2d virtual space (https://flat.social). While learning how to build it, I got really (possibly a bit more than necessary) into optimising graphics performance to make sure it runs smoothly even for users who access it on potato laptops.

This includes pretty much every aspect of the rendering process - how often are elements updated, textures, masking, interpolation, fonts and making sure that nothing renders more often than it should. It's a challenging but pleasant process as the result of experimentation is usually easy to measure (FPS + memory usage).

PS. If you're into it as well - try Safari's web inspector for measuring performance and investigating which frames were dropped. I found it much easier to use for debugging than Chrome.

Trying to make a program that a 93 year old grandmother could extend herself.

Zero-Knowledge Cryptography

P2P protocols, networking in general

Learning random tools in devops

Test automation in the browser without use of third party libraries or frameworks. Just a test runner in Node sending tests to the browser in localhost that execute user events in the DOM

Lately I've been playing around with learning type theory and writing parsers and langauges.

But I seem to gravitate towards writing code to decode various file formats. Over the years I've reverse engineered Apple Notes database, written code to read the realm database backing Craft.app, code to read couchdb files, lucene files, git pack files, sqlite databases (I have js code that runs queries against raw database files), etc.

I'm also interested in compression and cryptography. (Implementing toy systems to learn how stuff works.)

Disassembling DOS malware. I also like 80s/90s game (engine) development as well :)

Pen Plotting. For those unaware, pen plotters are basically tabletop robots that you can put a pen into and have it draw whatever you want. There's a friendly online community of people making art with them on twitter (search #plottertwitter) and instagram.

It's nice to have a coding-related outlet that also produces something tangible you can hold in your hand or put on a wall.

Digital Signal Processing (DSP) holds a particular fascination to me. It’s hard to find the necessary focus time to work on during the weekends though, what with the family needing some attention.

I usually end up writing simple native apps to ease silly pain points in my day-to-day life - low cognitive load, high perceived benefit. I try to get raw sockets involved whenever possible. There’s something satisfying about moving bytes around yourself. Kinda like DIY home projects.

Shader programming blows my mind, especially those niche programmers who are able to create entire scenes using only shaders.

For examples: www.shadertoy.com For learning: thebookofshaders.com

Autodifferentiable programming!

Neural networks are the famous example of this, of course -- but this can be extended to all of scientific computing. ODE/SDE solvers, root-finding algorithms, LQP, molecular dynamics, ...

These days I'm doing all my work in JAX. (E.g. see Equinox or Diffrax: https://github.com/patrick-kidger/equinox, https://github.com/patrick-kidger/diffrax). A lot of modern work is now based around hybridising such techniques with neural networks.

I'd really encourage anyone interested to learn how JAX works under-the-hood as well. (Look up "autodidax") Lots of clever/novel ideas in its design.

Revealed preferences say "making FreeBSD work in VMs". So far I've ported FreeBSD to EC2 and Firecracker...

Scientific programming, i.e., short term problem solving, especially when working with physical measurements and experiments. The work involves a combination of programming (desktop and embedded), physics, electronics, etc. I get to choose my own tech stack (Python and Arduino), and to a large extent, my battles.

I like the fact that Mother Nature ultimately conducts my performance review. She doesn't care about tech fads, personality test scores, or office politics. She doesn't tire of proving me wrong, over and over again.

Germane to other comments in the thread, I'm aware of the salary disparities in the different castes of tech workers. On the other hand, unless someone is exceptionally disciplined and motivated, it takes something more than pay to propel a career.

While in college, I had a summer internship in a computer facility. My present job is in a building with a large team of devs. I get to see what they actually do.

I've wondered to myself if I'd be happy enough as a developer to do it for as long as I've done my present job, or if I'd just get bored and burn out, or start to misbehave.

I really like reading RFCs and then implementing the protocols that they describe. Preferably just do it in some plain language without any libraries, just plain old TCP/UDP.

Whenever I get bored (rarely these days) I like to write path-finding & annealing algorithms. I start with a super simple ray-tracing framework I first wrote in the 1990's for visualization, and then I play around with things like gravity and electromagnetic repulsion / attraction. My favorite thing to do is watch a million charged spheres distribute themselves on a weird surface obeying gravity and electromagnetics, and then have another sphere try to navigate through them. It's pointless but satisfying. I'm sure Blender and Processing and all the new fancy tools can do it better, but I understand every single line of code, so I feel like it is something I made for me.