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Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

64 points by 31reasons ↗ HN
Everyone seems to be busy building MVPs in a weekend or in few months of time, and thats great as new technologies allow us to build much faster than even 10 years ago. But I want to know with that mentality and short time spans, what kind of stuff we avoid building simply because it would take years to make and has high opportunity costs for a single developer.

So as a hacker or an entrepreneur what product would you create if you have 5 years of time if you were sure you can not fail ? to put differently, What are the tough problems you think we need to solve but you simply don't have that much time or resources to do it? a new Mobile OS? file system? new language? what could it be?

EDIT: From the many comments, its interesting to note that some of the ideas are borderline science fiction! Amazing to know what a mere 5 year timescale allow human mind to think up.

95 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] thread
wheaties
1 year to talk to people in real businesses that aren't in tech and study their problem in depth.

4 years to create what they need.

Too vague? I don't know enough about enough things outside of tech to really build something that would actually help the rest of the world. (The only thing I can think of is another Skype-like company akin to Twillio but for video communication with a phone. That probably would fail until costs come down.)

rajesht
thats a waterfall model, may be agile might be more useful :)
hackerpolicy
An interesting response, perhaps you're being downvoted for an English mistake?
31reasons
I really liked the idea that you added problem search as part of the product development. Many times investors want to invest in you if you already have the idea. It would be awesome to think some investment funds to just search for problems in specific domains!
paulsamways
More people should be doing this. You don't even have to move out of tech yourself, find a position in a company where tech is only ancillary, not the core focus. You'd be surprised just how many real problems are out there waiting to be solved.
gpjt
You can do that, but it might not be fun. I spent 4 years in tech at A Big Financial Company and the one thing I learned was that I didn't want to work at a company where my work wasn't a core part of the business. I've heard that at Oracle they say (used to say?) that you build [stuff], you sell [stuff], or you are [stuff].
paulsamways
Won't disagree with you there! Though sometimes going outside your comfort zone can be a good thing.
ZaneClaes
I have a propensity to think overly-meta. I'd delve deep into connecting disparate parts of the internet, fusing services together into an experience which eliminated a lot of the "service here, service there" paradigm we currently observe. This is really an extension of what I'm already working on in the social+news realm @ Streamified.com, but ultimately would be much larger in scope, incorporating learning algorithms and neural networks to ultimately transform the internet into a sort of persistant secondary-hive-mind accessible from anywhere.
yamalight
A game. Because I love games :)
ambiate
Education. I feel teaching people reinforces learning.

Systems for targeting chronically disabled and introducing them to services they qualify for in the state. Introducing disabled to technology.

Background: My mother was born with cerebral palsy. Other than a $500/mo check, medicaid and $30 in foodstamps, she has not received any other services until 13Q1. I finally signed her up for meals on wheels and getting her cleaning services, etc, from the state. This was always available to her at no cost, but she had no clue.

My mother also has an IQ of 120 that is going to waste as she sits at home alone, many states away. Rather than going insane from loneliness, she could at least mechanical turk it up in her living room... beats talking to cats.

Bjuukia
Check out the Virtual Ability group on Second Life. People there are really helpful both with helping you find aid, and learning technology. There's voice chat, if typing is difficult.

I actually want to help people with disabilities with daily things like cooking meals, helping to clean the house, grocery shopping, etc. I don't know how to start.

era86
A fully integrated Electronic Medical Health Record (EMR/EHR) system and patient portal. Completely web-based application providing secure patient/doctor communication, scheduling, patient visit summary, health record summaries, etc.

Sell it to small/independent clinics. Then make tons of money by letting big pharma companies advertise their drugs to patients on the portal.

squidsoup
I have a similar goal, but would want to integrate CDSS into the fabric of the EMR.
jrosenblatt
Not incredibly ambitious, but would be cool:

Gmail like it used to be before the Google Plus redesign, with Boomerangforgmail and Idonethis built in

niggler
The problem is that you can spend years or decades working on something that the market deems irrelevant. Case in point: GNU Hurd.
DanBC
Isn't the problem with Hurd the fact that they did spend years working on it, instead of just releasing something early and iterating?
31reasons
The question I have presented here does not imply an old traditional development model where you keep working on something for years and then release it to the public. You can use agile or whatever model deem appropriate to you. The question is about What would you FOCUS on for 5 years even if you don't see a light of success and keep working on it.
arash_milani
IMHO Having more time like 5 years doesn't mean anyone is going o build something more valuable; I even think by having a limited time to deliver something (e.g 6 months) you are going to deliver the most valuable thing and skip anything that is simply not needed for user. So I think you should stop thinking about the time limit as a constrain to deliver a GREAT idea.
fusiongyro
It might be more valuable simply by virtue of not being a product of this mindset. Certainly nobody on HN is going to tackle a problem that might take five years to bring to market, even as we adore products that obviously took more than six months to produce (the iPhone, the Roadster, etc.)
dman
I would in fact love to tackle such problems since I think the market for 5 - 10 year problems is much less efficient.
fusiongyro
While I'm giving out free advice I have no intention of acting on, consider tackling a problem with a significant initial investment in personnel. Nobody on HN is interested in launching a startup with a bunch of employees. If you find a niche where you would need that you can expect not to have much competition from folks around here.
31reasons
Don't forget Tesla, SpaceX that certainly took more than 6 months to even design it.
hnwh
a time machine
Jeremy1026
I think I would devote those 5 years to writing a new browser. My goal would be to have a browser that is 100% standards compliant. My browser would run, and display web pages, equally on Windows XP+, OS X 10.5+, as well as all the major flavors of Linux.
MichaelGG
100% standards compliant -- have you read specs and tried to implement them before? This is the kind of phrasing I tend to expect from people that are either selling things, or not really involved in implementation. Standards aren't actually programs, and there is generally some measure of ambiguity.

Then, real-world interop issues that cause things to be less than standard. Not to mention that it's unlikely if the browser was "100% standards compliant", it would probably be missing some functionality that would severely impact behaviour.

And I'm also curious as to what benefit you think there is to delivering a browser in 2018 that targets a 16-year-old, 32-bit OS?

Jeremy1026
The advantage to being 100% standards compliant would be that when you use a specific <insert technology here> feature, it would work as the <insert technology creator here> claims that it should.

As far as why benefit to creating a browser in 2018 that targets 16 year old OSs, because there is no guarantee that we will be in a 64-bit (or greater) exclusive world by then. Without knowing the future, my goal setting off would to remain as cross-system ready as possible, which of course includes some 32-bit OSs

onlyup
That seems like it would be a waste of 5 years. In 5 years browsers will be even better than they are today.. and they are given away for free!
franklovecchio
Food (all aspects):

- use warehouses to build automated aquaponics food farms managed like servers (the info available on this stuff is not exactly scientific)

- fast food that is _real_ food (and potentially grown in an abandoned warehouse close-by).

ErikAugust
A platform to combine the services that I (and everyone else) use: social networks, self-tracking tools into a simple, chronological interface. I've started at lifegrid.co but have not began integrating APIs from services.
dman
What would the OP build?
elf25
a big ass awesome boat.
davewasthere
That's probably what I'd do too. Build a boat. Just been out on a mate's boat that took him seven years part time. I'd like to knock out something bigger, and aluminium rather than wood. 5 years full time would fly by, I'm sure...
binarymax
A fully fledged artificial artist.

Edit: (and why?) ...because nothing would interest me more.

shanev
A digestive system simulator. Input your biomarkers and some other statistics about yourself and your level of activity. Select a food and quantity. It will tell you how your body would process it. How much would turn to fat, how it will affect your blood sugar, and other consequences of eating it. It could possibly be paired with a blood sugar monitoring device that is always attached to your finger. You'll be able to do fun stuff, like find out how many Pop Tarts you need to eat to get diabetes, etc. We are getting sick eating modern food and most of us are oblivious to it. This will help open some eyes.
tferris
Weird question and the answer is, don't plan for the next five years, plan for the next week, develop an MVP and when it's deployed think about the next step.
eli_gottlieb
I would finally finish my goddamn compiler for my goddamn systems programming language.

I'm honestly considering just tearing out my type system and type-inference so I can implement something in there that has actually been verified as formally valid. Waiting months at a time just to get my stupid paper reviewed again is boring and useless.

If I had money, I would also hire some professional web designers to help me make my web-app for using Bayesian reasoning to replace tech recruiters. Launching the thing as a lifestyle business is really appealing, but I can't web-design for crap.

onaclov2000
Iron Man Suit, (Complete), doubt it'd take me only 5 years though. I think it would be so amazing to fly, and have all the capabilities of that thing (not as excited about the weaponization, but all the other aspects)

Thinking machine, software that learns how I learn.

denniskubes
AI. I would immerse myself in everything from neuroscience to machine learning to computation theory. Then try to build practical implementations.
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