Poll: What is your main focus?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203021

by 3rd3 • 12 years ago

41 54 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

3rd311• 12 years ago

Did I miss a major field or category?

maxiepoo• 12 years ago

Programming Languages?

3rd311• 12 years ago

Is it too broad for a subcategory of theoretical computer science?

mikexstudios• 12 years ago

Physical sciences? (instead of physics)

3rd311• 12 years ago

Done.

EliRivers• 12 years ago

Something for those of us for whom the job is just a way to pay for what we actually want to do.

saraid2162• 12 years ago

Oh, I was supposed to put down my job? :( Oops.

saosebastiao2• 12 years ago

Operations Research

3rd311• 12 years ago

Do you think it justifies for a separate category? Wikipedia says "It is often considered to be a sub-field of mathematics.", but I know that Wikipedia is not always correct and that I have some other small categories already at choice.

_random_• 12 years ago

Classic application development?

ColinWright2• 12 years ago

False multichotomy - on different days I could tick at least half those boxes, because on those days that would be my main focus.

Moto7451• 12 years ago

The poll allows for more than one vote. I voted for the two categories I spend the most time in.

ColinWright2• 12 years ago

When most people vote for one category, voting for more than one makes a mockery of the whole process and just makes it even more pointless than these polls usually are. Better would be to ask people to spread ten votes around the places they feel they have more focus on. Those that have a single point of focus could put all ten votes on that, people like me could spread them around accordingly.

To accurately reflect my "main focus" I should vote about 15 times for math and then spread votes liberally around the others. Instead I shall abstain.

jlgaddis2• 12 years ago

So tick all of the relevant ones then?

xexers• 12 years ago

QA?

3rd311• 12 years ago

Done.

ababab• 12 years ago

Testing/Quality should be an option.

yoha3• 12 years ago

Maybe add an "other CS-related" and "not CS-related" fields ?

buro9• 12 years ago

I run a software startup producing a SaaS product for communities.

My main focus is the psychology of groups of people.

Everything the software is and does, is about serving those people and improving their lives. Without knowledge of how individuals and groups behave, this entire venture is futile.

sarreph• 12 years ago

You missed HN off the list.

mightypirate• 12 years ago

Procrastination

nether• 12 years ago

Aerospace engineering

x43b• 12 years ago

aerospace engineering as well

3rd311• 12 years ago

Done.

MrJagil2• 12 years ago

It's funny, I sometimes feel like I am the only one on Hacker News who isn't an actual hacker, nor have any knowledge in field. I'm just a guy with a general, intellectual curiosity and HN somewhat satisfies that.

I'm a recording/mixing/mastering engineer and I study philosophy. For some reason I am drawn to the tech scene. It is very strange surfing this site, having to disregard 80% of the links on the front page. I mean, in the beginning, every second word i read was completely incomprehensible to me (ajax, kernels, clojure, get, git, whatever).

Yet I've stuck around for years..

ntaso3• 12 years ago

Did you read up on all the stuff you didn't know or do you still dismiss them? Ever bothered learning how to code?

aidos• 12 years ago

That sort of sounded snarky but I'm not sure if it was meant to.

HN is a good place to get educated about a subject through the medium of debate. I know it's a bit of an echo chamber etc, but you can learn a lot here. Frequently I read a article posted here and have an opinion only to see it challenged back and forth by people who know the field well.

Philosophy and deep mathematics collide somewhere alone the line so you're probably not that far away in your studies :) Some years ago I coaxed my brother into jumping from a philosophy degree straight into mathematical logic (he went on to drop out of a PhD in category theory).

lkrubner• 12 years ago

Rich Hickey created the Clojure programming language and he has the same background as you. In school, he focused on music, and his creative energy was directed at music composition. There is a mountain of anecdotal evidence suggesting a link between the type of mind that creates music and the type of mind that creates software. After school Hickey got a job at a music studio, and it was there that he first encountered computers. See here:

http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/

Fogus: What drew you to programming?

Hickey: I was running a recording studio and got a computer for it. I was intrigued by what it could do—this was in the relatively early days of MIDI—and filled with the possibilities of what it might do. So I taught myself C and assembly language and started writing music software. I was immediately hooked.

Danieru• 12 years ago

Did I miss it or is there no Operating Systems & Compilers?

jlgaddis2• 12 years ago

It's at the bottom but maybe it was added after you posted your question?

3rd311• 12 years ago

Right, I added afterwards.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

Blogspam isn't a choice?

HeyLaughingBoy• 12 years ago

If I have an electronics hardware business based on microcontrollers should I choose entrepreneurship, software, or hardware?

yoha3• 12 years ago

yes

3rd311• 12 years ago

I think whatever comes to your mind first. What are you most passionate about?

malandrew• 12 years ago

Developer tools is missing.

nherment• 12 years ago

be happy

eugeneross• 12 years ago

Money.

SteroidsLove• 12 years ago

Application development encapsulates both, Desktop, Mobile and Web?

3rd311• 12 years ago

I think it’s too late now to split it up, so yes. But it would be interesting to see how people on HN are distributed among these cases. I think I will re-submit the poll with better categories one day or other.

mattwad• 12 years ago

Javascript, making people's lives easier with technology

sdfjkl• 12 years ago

All of the above. Or almost. And being a jack of all trades really works for me. In fact, that's what I think my focus really is - picking up new skills, figuring stuff out with an obsessive drive to know how everything works. And having done this all my life, I've gotten pretty good at it. I was never happy doing just one thing for any length of time. Now I do them all (consultant with multiple clients doing very different stuff for each, plus my own projects). First time I really feel like I'm enjoying my work.

jedanbik• 12 years ago

For the next few months, physical oceanography.

dtrizzle• 12 years ago

Law

Poll: What is your main focus?

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