Ask HN: Who IS in the software industry or a hacker?

The earlier I conversation for non-devs for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154625

[deleted] 11y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

.net developer by day. Don't have the time to hack after work. Girlfriend and family time.

When I'm able I tinker with emacs, js2-mode, and skewer. It's fun to hack JavaScript in emacs.

So what type of software developer / hacker are you? What kind of company do you work for? How did you start off in the industry? What new technologies do you want to learn next?

I've been developing software for a living since 2000, and before that I was working in IT since about 1995. I started out doing a lot of network admin (Netware 3.1 anybody?) and AS/400 operations stuff while I was still in school. I dabbled in programming when I was a kid (8-9-10'ish or so) but we never had a PC in my home, so I never got deep into programming until college. I took a programming class in college about 1992 and was immediately hooked. I bought a copy of Herbert Schildt's Teach Yourself C, downloaded a shareware C compiler from somewhere, acquired a cheap PC and have basically never looked back.

Over my career I've mainly worked in Java, with some C/C++ before that, and now do a lot of Java and Groovy stuff. I've also worked with Visual Basic a bit a long time ago, and with Python a bit circa 2008-2009 or so. More recently I have some ambition to learn R, Prolog, Go, Clojure, Scala, Julia and a handful of other stuff that's on my "learn one day" list.

What kind of company do I work for? By day I work for Open Software Integrators[1], a boutique professional services firm in Durham NC, where we focus on helping companies apply "Big Data" technologies. One of my most recent projects was building a Hadoop data warehouse for a big pharma company that was doing some really cool stuff that I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to talk about (non-disclosure agreements and what-not).

By night and weekend I work on a startup called Fogbeam Labs[2]. We are focused on applying Semantic Web tech, social networking, machine learning and related tech to create a kick-ass Open Source organizational knowledge management / collaboration system.

And like (many|most|some|???) hackers, I am also generally interested in tech beyond programming. I am a member of the local hackerspace in Durham[3], and I dabble in various things there. I've been learning to do some embedded / microcontroller stuff with Arduino, rPi, Beaglebones, etc., building electronic circuits from discrete components, started on building a coil-gun (but have kinda let that go dormant lately), and I have a goal to build a Mantis PCB mill at some point. I'd also like to build a 3D printer (maybe a rep-rap) someday.

I did dabble in the "black hat" hacking scene a bit back in the mid 90's, but was really more into phone phreaking stuff. My claim to fame from that phase of my life is that me and a couple of friends had admin level access to a phone switch owned by the local telco (I think it was a DMS-100) for a while. But by the late 90's I was getting into my professional career and it was becoming obvious that playing in that world was a fast path to either jail or at least a big hit to my career so I dropped out of that scene pretty much completely. I mean, yeah, I still read 2600 and Phrack every now and again, but that's about it.

[1]: http://www.osintegrators.com

[2]: http://www.fogbeam.com

[3]: http://www.splatspace.org

junto 11y ago ↗

I'm a .NET developer working on contract, predominantly in the insurance industry. I do some client support and business analysis as well.

If I had more free time I'd learn node.is and properly get to grips with JS client side frameworks like Angular and Ember.

Computer Science BSc is my academic background.