AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

Top comment by artagnon

I used to work as a compiler engineer in the US for several years, before deciding to try starting over at the age of 30, in pure mathematics. I moved from the US to Paris in pursuit of an affordable mathematics education, and spent two years in a Masters program. I did have a considerable amount of savings, but it was very risky nevertheless: if it didn't work out, I'd be out-of-touch with compilers, and it would be hard to interview again, with a considerable career gap in my résumé.

For various reasons, mathematics didn't work out, and I was forced to interview again. Fortunately, I did manage to find a job as a compiler engineer again, and will be moving to London soon.

Now, the price of my adventure was quite steep. I uprooted my life when I moved from the US to Paris (especially because I didn't know French at the time), and the upcoming move to London will once again be difficult. I nearly halved my savings, by studying mathematics at my own expense, and will be back to earning the equivalent of my starting salary in the US.

However, I'm an adventurous person, and view my experience in positive light. I'd been wanting to study Jacob Lurie's books for the longest time, and I finally did it. I worked on a mathematical manuscript, which is now up on arXiv [1], and on a type theory project which has been submitted to LICS '23 [2]. I've had a good life in Paris, and my French is decent.

There's the larger philosophical question of "What is a life well-lived?", and for me, the answer is to pursue those things that you're truly passionate about, even if it doesn't work out.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09652

[2]: https://artagnon.com/logic/νType.pdf

2. Ask HN: Are people still using Pascal?

Top comment by magicalhippo

Our main product is in Delphi, a B2B CRUD-ish application, with a 60% market share in our niche. We're crucial to daily operations of many local branches of well-known global businesses.

These days it's obvious the years of lost momentum is taking a toll. The language hasn't evolved much and is showing its age in many areas. The IDE is far behind Visual Studio in terms of code completion and similar help. It's also been difficult hiring developers.

We've looked at moving to the web, but none of the front-end frameworks and tools we've seen so far get anywhere close to the ease of Delphi when it comes to making decent looking user interfaces with nontrivial functionality that doesn't silently break in random weird ways from one day to the next.

Also, if you want something in between a full CRM and "assembly level" database access, Delphi has some powerful libraries and components.

To give some perspective, we've got hundreds of businesses with many thousands of users, many large modules which constantly evolve, we have tons of custom integrations per customer, including custom data entry windows/screens. The largest customer has 25 integrations, 20 of them entirely custom including non-trivial new user interfaces, and got onboarded in less than a year from signing the contract. This with a team of 7 devs total and zero hired manpower. I'm not sure we could have gotten this far with such few developers with any other tool/platform.

But as I said, things are changing. So far we're moving the "backend" stuff to .Net/C#. Via RPC and message queues we can implement pieces in .Net while keeping the frontend in Delphi for now. We'll probably move the front end at some point once we find something suitable.

3. Ask HN: How to get an accessibility tester job as a blind programmer?

Top comment by bcx

We (Olark YC S09) are in the process of building out a fully accessible platform for realtime communication (live chat, bots/automations) for both agents and visitors, and regularly work with folks to help our team test and improve our work -- it's still early days Progress Not Perfection :).

I am definitely interesting in talking, you can apply as a tester here: https://www.olark.com/ada-accessible-live-chat

And you can ping me personally on Linkedin if you want to chat more. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencongleton)

We work with both individuals often as contractors, and agencies as well.

You might want to talk to the folks at lighthouse SF, they do consulting for a lot of tech companies, and have a matching program, I am actually going to be at their offices Thursday, so I can follow up with best way to get in touch, but I'd assume the emails on the below link will get you what you need. https://lighthouse-sf.org/programs/access-technology/

And we've also worked with Fable who manages engagements like what you are looking for: https://makeitfable.com/community/

4. Ask HN: How did you rebuild yourself after having hit rock bottom?

Top comment by ianai

This actually reads almost normal for a last year of a phd. But you’re in a phd program and probably much closer to complete than you think.

I’d reach out to your professors about your misgivings about your research. Make it clear that you’re looking to complete the thing asap and need guidance.

Forget the outside stuff. Relationships can wait until you’re done. Feeling like a failure or success is almost a worthless concern as you’re clearly nearly done with a huge life goal. A life goal that will change the context of your life ever after. Much more than any marriage could even. Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. (Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down.) But a degree is a hurdle you surpass once and get to wave the success of forever after. (Just don’t be a jerk about it, side point.)

Know that on the other side of your phd is a huge weight off your shoulders regardless of failure or successful defense. This time of strife will end when the phd. Freedom is soon.

You’re looking at a time where the job market remains strongly favorable. I graduated into the Great Recession and would have benefited greatly from this market, high interest rates and other things be damned. The future is still bright - just got to get past this last bit.

5. Ask HN: How do you get companies to talk to you about their problems?

Top comment by phphphphp

You don't go in cold, you go in warm. Building a product in an industry you aren't familiar with is very difficult and even if you can get companies to talk to you, you're not going to be well positioned to truly understand what they're saying. You need to start with the relationships (either by developing them, or hiring people who already have these relationships). Pick any startup in your target industry and look at who they've hired: they'll be filled with industry stalwarts who provide the domain knowledge and relationships required to understand what's needed. If you want to sell into life sciences, time to hire some experienced VPs from your competitors.

Airbyte isn't a great example for you because businesses using ELT tools are radically different to pharmaceutical companies: pharmaceutical companies are working in a very slow moving industry that requires a great deal of careful consideration. As people in technology, we get caught up in the belief that because we can build incredible masterpieces that we're owed the time and expertise of others that we need to realise these incredible masterpieces... We're not. You have to approach this from a much more humble position, you're going cap in hand, you're not a hero, you're begging for scraps.

6. Ask HN: What companies have publicly available handbooks?

Top comment by kalendos

I keep a list of public company handbooks here: https://publish.obsidian.md/davidgasquez/Company+Handbooks.

7. Ask HN: Found a leak of US citizens personal data. Should I report it?

Top comment by sixhobbits

Maybe tell someone like Troy Hunt from haveibeenpawned. He has a pretty good reputation/following for verifying this kind of thing and telling the right people.

8. Ask HN: Is Mastodon the best alternative to Twitter?

Top comment by asim

The best alternative to twitter is no twitter. Let me explain. The feed and micro blogging format is a recipe for disaster. It's a combination of dopamine hits, crack addiction and rage inducing hyperbole. While there's merits to such a service, it's not clear they outweigh the costs of the format. When it's too easy for people to tweet their thoughts we end up in a disarray of thought leadership from mostly clueless people or those who elevate their significance based on number of followers.

In all honesty the best alternative to twitter is no twitter, until we find a better format for community discussion. Maybe it's private community chat, or similar, not sure. Maybe it's the end of public social. I think a lot of us are just looking for quieter smaller groups to share with.

A note on Mastodon. It's going closer in that direction of community specific servers but I think a better alternative would be if we could keep it private and cap group sizes. Right now it just feels like a replica of twitter segregated by topic or community. All the inherit bad behaviour still propagates because of the form factor.

9. Ask HN: Science fiction movies that are appropriate for 12 year olds?

Top comment by ashwagary

Galaxy Quest is a scifi Star Trek parody kids that age love. Not too serious but still interesting.

10. Ask HN: Are subscriptions the doom of the tech sector?

Top comment by rkagerer

As a user/purchaser I hate subscription models.

The only exception is when there really is distinctive ongoing value being delivered (eg. VPN provider). But my bar for what constitutes 'ongoing value' is high.

I don't agree that it aligns incentives between me and the developer. I've found many of the subscription services I've signed up for tend to substantially degenerate in quality after a few years, as they start chasing a perceived larger market share by bloating with features I don't want and would be happy to pay more NOT to have (looking at you, Dropbox).

By contrast, I'm still using lots of software I initially purchased decades ago (tools like Hard Disk Sentinel and Beyond Compare are great examples).

I consider bugs to be manufacturing defects, for which fixes should be free (generally, minor version upgrades). Many parts of the world even have 'fit for stated purpose' laws to that end. If a car manufacturer sells you a lemon, they have some responsibility to fix the faulty parts (eg. recalls).

When the developer adds new features I'm interested in, I'm happy to pay for them (traditionally, major version upgrades). I prefer having the opportunity to make my own decision about whether the new features are worth it, and keep using the old one if not.

I own a ton of useful software, and I'd be broke if I had to pay for all of it on an ongoing basis.

In a world where all software is subscription, we'd all be using the same handful of suites from the top vendors. Better for a rich and diverse ecosystem.