Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code?

I don’t work on web apps at all. Most of my time goes into security tooling and analysis pipelines. A lot of it is closer to systems work than application development: parsing large datasets, automating analysis, dealing with flaky inputs, and building things that are mostly run headless. The feedback loop is slower than web work, but the problems tend to be deeper and longer-lived. You spend less time on UX and more time thinking about correctness, edge cases, and failure modes. I suspect there are many people here doing similar non-web work, it’s just less visible because there’s no UI to screenshot or product to demo.

I build audio software engines mostly. This is highly enjoyable to me, because I get to create new sounds and new audio effects with results being near instant. Upgrading old Amiga ProTracker .MOD file playback to not sound so 8-bit and low samplerate is a fun challenge too.

Compressing Lamport Signatures is a side-project of mine too.

I haven't made a website of any kind since a C&C: Red Alert fan site somewhere on GeoCities in the late 90s.

I work on graphics drivers. They're hard write and even harder to debug. You have to be a huge nerd about graphics to get very far. It's a relatively rare skill set, but new, younger, nerdier people keep on coming. Most people in graphics are quiet and are just keeping the industry functioning (me). It's applied computer architecture in a combination of continuous learning and intuition from experience.

I did do web work for a long time, but I grew tired of it, so these days I just do contract work on legacy systems and platform modernizations. Some of those systems may have a web UX, some do not. But the work is more about refactoring architectures to get off brittle tech that nobody knows anymore, and move on to tech stacks where you can actually find talent to run it.

It is a different experience to be sure - I work on stuff that nobody likes and where most people are surprised it still exists. And my goals tend to be about shutting down, not growing. I succeed with every server we kill, every product we turn off, every customer we get rid of.

I am not working on web or server stuff.

I'm building a better primitive for infrastructure via microvm's (think virtual machine but fast and easy to use).

I am about to launch a complete rewrite of this: https://github.com/BinSquare/ERA

I work on industrial automation software (SCADA/HMI, MES, PLC comms protocols, etc.).

I am currently working on a desktop application for 3D spreadsheets.

The first version of the code looks like this, https://youtube.com/watch?v=rJuRTZOE99g

The new version is much more feature rich, catering towards the user. Unreal use in Python is now native and users can launch a dedicated server.

The development process can be slow, lots of waiting on compiling and cooking. The Python part of this project is great. Code is very simple and readable and I'm building out a renderer for the geometric algebra package I'm using, Kingdon. This lets users quickly visualize 3D elements, lines, points, planes, and shapes. Working on non-web stuff is great. I love building out UI and text in 3D, it feels like the final form of UI and is a lot more expressive than web UI. Controlling objects in 3D let's you do a lot more. Everything feels right.

I work on embedded systems. C++, or C back in the old days. 2 years were in Pascal.

I work in RF comms. Most of my work is in network simulation from the transport layer all the way down to the physical layer to prove out radio performance before expensive flight testing. I also work on error correction schemes as the networks I develop may be lossy compared to the internet at large.

I used to work in web dev, but I enjoy my current work a lot more. Most of my web role was just taking mockups from the UX team and translating them into code which felt mindless. Now I get handed a system and am asked to squeeze as much performance out of it as possible which I find much more interesting.

Embedded systems / IoT / Smart Home. Lots of C. There’s still backend and mobile but there’s a LOT of C and firmware at the core.

I'm in healthcare IT management, infrastructure, policy, new projects, all the stuff that comes down from the top, except I have a strong technical background, rather than just being a business guy. I started in PC repair 30+ years ago and have always been a hardware guy. I can do a little coding, but I'm the guy that creates the platforms coders work on.

Embedded SW here, mostly automotive. Consulting and trying to make Rust a thing in the field.

I was a web developer until 9 years ago. It was Django & jQuery, but React came with factories of abstract factories, and I happily quit for geospatial development and analysis.

Earlier it was geodata imports from OSM or private sources. Now it's mostly routers and GPS tracks. Interfacing with OSRM & Valhalla via C bindings. Road graph analysis and algorithms. I wrote a router myself, comparing different routing algorithms. I also developed a pedestrian traffic model for entire cities, for retail. I also did various ML models. My languages are Python w/ GeoPandas & CatBoost, Rust, Go.

I developed Android apps for an EV charging platform for 5 years. Now working for Mapbox to integrate a navigation app into cars. Quite complex environment. Most Android topics are exactly the same as on a phone, it’s quite fun though because your app can control car functionality

(Germany/Munich)

I am working on the bare metal automation of IronCore. The project provides tooling to automate the management of data-center hardware and a an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering on top of that.

https://ironcore.dev/

Previously I was working on the ingress components of Cloud Foundry, a Platform-as-a-Service offering.

https://www.cloudfoundry.org/

I work on 3D printing algorithms at Formlabs. Lots of computational geometry.

IT Architect.

Currently rebuilding a VFX studio replacing Windows with Linux with a bespoke PXE system and then implementing a Data Vault to secure IP we receive from movie studios.

I’m an ML researcher currently working on model compression for AI hardware accelerators. Mostly developing and testing quantization algorithms, and hw/sw codesign.

I do infrastructure automation, so other people can run web stuff (and some other things).

I am working on fundraising and administration for a robotics venture. Very little work goes on engineering subjects at present, more often things like patent law, corporate administration, strategy, network build-out and the present penultimate goal fundraising for an aggressive scale go to market autonomous factory. However, the prior eight years have given me an amazing opportunity to study all manner of engineering subjects from mechanical to structural, electronic to electrical, production and fabrication through operations research, logistics and supply chain. I now have a very 'grass roots' view of venture administration, cross-disciplinary R&D and commercialization that is globally informed and very difficult to gain in any context. While significant yield remains at this stage speculative, nevertheless it is very interesting!

Doing embedded development using C. Thoroughly enjoy it.

I was once in a group that was switched away from the work we were doing and repurposed to do web work. It was a bad experience, but not because it was web work. The code base we were given was in terrible shape and we weren't allowed the time to adequately fix issues. Thankfully I no longer work there.

Neurotech, so a combination of hardware, software, and science.

Though the end-use isn't web, we can't deny that much of development still goes to building web-services and consumer app.

I work on a CAD package for Architects. In C++. It is a native Windows / macOS application.

It's a giant pile of legacy code so a lot of what I do is just C++ generalist stuff, but I have a strong math background so if that's ever called for it's me doing that work (especially because I have English-language skills that don't often come with the strong math background at this pay scale). In particular, I'm the guy wrangling Parasolid (geometry kernel used by SolidWorks, for those familiar) to produce geometry for walls and floors.

Side project: A native macOS app in Swift that runs locally and uses AI to clean and organize files by moving them into the best-matching folders. No backend or accounts. https://floxtop.com

Full-time: C++ work on nearby connectivity (bluetooth) for embedded / industrial devices (factory equipment). Deep stack, hardware constraints, long lifecycles, high reliability.

Non-web work feels very different: stronger constraints, slower but deliberate releases, and bugs are much more expensive. There’s a lot of interesting software being built far away from HTTP and browsers.

Side project(s): Grokking Windows development from the top of the stack to the kernel; everything from Win32, WinUI, WPF, COM, to user- and kernel-mode driver development. It's fun to write drivers in modern C++. Also, massively procrastinated, Vulkan/D3D12 cross-platform game engine written in C++23/26, work-in-progress.

Full time work: GPU driver development and integration for a smartphone series. It's fun to see how the sauce is made.

Eventually: hope to pick up Rust.