HN Explorer

Ask HN: Any other readers Not working in a web-based start-up?

38 points by Toenex ↗ HN
Reading HN one could come to the conclusion that start-up = website + marketing and that node.js, bootstrap and github are the only technologies you'll need. Now I'm not for a minute deriding either fantastic web based start-ups or wonderful new technologies. It's just that I work for a medical image analysis start-up and we build conventional technology, desktop applications for highly regulated clinical end users. Just what the diversity of HN readers is in terms of their role, technology, company size and domain. Perhaps I just want to know I'm not the only one who never learnt javascript...

77 comments

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ColinWright
FWIW, from my profile:

    I'm a PhD in Pure Maths (Combinatorics and Graph Theory)
    from the University of Cambridge.  My BSc(Hons) was in Pure
    maths from Monash University, Australia.  I work in industry
    as a director of Innovation and Research, helping to create
    equipment that does the maritime equivalent of Air-Traffic
    Control. Basically, we provide kit to help people stop 30,000
    tonne oil tankers from crashing into nuclear submarines.
The day job involves image processing, data compression, machine learning, behaviour analysis, user psychology, encryption, fault-tolerant systems, data merging, and some other stuff.
cfontes
Hum... interesting I do the same thing but with rail roads and only software (Desktop software) we use other people sensors and GPSs( thanks God our problem is 2D, yours is a lot harder)

The Company software is planning the train routes so 15k tons trains filled with gas don't crash into another 15k tons train filled with iron ore in the middle of a city.

It's not a startup but we are only 30 people and half are administrative roles, so we are pretty small.

ColinWright 

  > ... our problem is 2D,
  > yours is a lot harder
Most of ours is 2D - as I say, we do the maritime equivalent, so we're watching ships, most of which stay at sea level. We do have to track low flying helicopters, micro-lights, and other aircraft, but we're primarily 2D.
Nursie
C programmer here, mostly traditional server-side stuff with an emphasis on high performance and security.

Not working for start-ups either, unless you consider my freelancing/contracting company a startup, which I suppose it is because I only started it this year. Its only product is me though.

--edit-- You may still be the only one that never learned javascript! I did a web-frontend project earlier this year.

verdverm
i just finished my masters in cs, thinking about phd, job, or startup... i've learned a little javascript in the past, looking at haskell for applications to the combinatorics of graph theory to cfg's
georgespencer
Where are you based? I'd love to talk to you about a full time role.
eLobato
CERN programmer/devops here, but it involves lots of startup-y stuff like Rails to be honest. I share your impression of HN but there are quite a few nuggets of knowledge that I take away from reading this everyday.
amorphid
I've been recruiting mostly for web companies lately, but recently I started working a company that makes a SAN/NAS appliance. It's a nice change of pace to talk to people doing stuff with kernels and file systems. I suppose you could build a storage appliance running Node.js, but I'm not sure you'd want to.

By the way, you left Redis off your list.

Kliment
I do open source hardware development and open source desktop software. I don't enjoy doing web stuff (but I can bruteforce my way through it when necessary).
svec
I'm an embedded software engineer. I used to design x86 chips.

90% of my programming is in C, 5% in assembly (ARM, mostly), and 5% in Python for test automation and general scripting.

I've worked for companies with 100000 people and 60 people, and a couple in-between; all are in the chip business.

I've done a bit of web stuff on the side, mainly to see what I'm missing in my day job.

snogglethorpe
compiler/os dev (etc) for a large japanese semiconductor company
KohgnaK
PhD in microscopy image analysis here, full academia.

Mainly prototyping with MATLAB/Python, I'm trying not to let my C/C++ skills rust too much by having a few side projects (rewriting old commodore/amiga games now, I love you Pang!)

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signa11
wireless infrastructure, more specifically epc-core.
msutherl
I make art installations, performances, and new musical interfaces using tools like Max/MSP/Jitter, Pure Data, SuperCollider, Processing and openFrameworks coupled with some hardware hacking, but it's difficult to make money doing this before you reach a certain level of notoriety in the community, so I have a day-job as a web programmer.

A short-term goal is to become an expert in real-time/multimedia technology for the web (video, WebAudio, WebRTC).

(If anybody has a startup working with this kind of stuff, please shoot me an email.)

martinariel
Tech lead in a software company, we build VRP&AVL systems on top of a custom map engine. The core algorithms are built in C++, and the different clients(gui) are built in a broad range of technologies: Java, Delphi, C++, C#, javascript and so on.
theorique
Finance - C, Python, bash, R.

I do a little javascript for our home brew monitoring tools and screens, but that's for in-house only. We're not building a product out of them - the "product" is trading faster and smarter than other people.

nva
RF guy building RF hardware.
soundlab
Same here. Profitable two year old hardware startup in niche distributed antenna systems and M2M www.RFvenue.com
nva
Hey that's really cool. I'm from thinkrf.
MalphasWats
I'm a Computing teacher in a UK secondary school. I do web development stuff in my spare time.
jfb
Video -- HLS on a variety of platforms. I did do he YC thing, and before that wrote a bunch of software for Apple. Started out as a general Unix dogsbody for the Departments of High Energy Physics and Anthropology at my alma mater lo these 20 years ago.
msutherl
Your blog is fun. We need more elder perspective around.
binarysolo
Data scientist/consultant using a blend of Python, Postgres, Mongo, d3.js, R, Hadoop and other ML goodies. I was a grad student tired of my PhD program and ended up gathering a group of fellow alums at Stanford to become a small data/analytics shop.
just_testing
Do you have any clients in finance? If so, how do you deal with the issue of "it's sensitive, we can't let you have this information"?
binarysolo
Yes; NDAs and what not + ssh-ing into their servers or going on-site to use their equipment so the data stays in their machines.
bdcravens
Working for small company doing web/business intelligence/SOA work, but definitely not a startup. They are profitable though :-)
ericosperrella
Biotechnology and mining. Python and C for simulation.
atlantic
C#/ASP.NET developer, freelance web development work.
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jelmerdejong
Working at a software company that builds portal software for banks. We are not a startup, we are building enterprise software, software that runs on premise and is not sold as SaaS.

However, HN is great inspiration and a valuable source. IMHO enterprise software or enterprise is the market place that is missing innovation and real challengers. More and more companies should fight the status quo and challenge the big dominators (e.g. IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP). And I hope to see 2013 as the year where we see more Y Combinator startups and also HN discussion around startups that do exactly this.