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Comment by lumberjack | Hacker News Reader

Only tangentially related but it seems to me that if you want to work on cool software that does something novel and exciting it seems like it's better to graduate with a degree in math or physics.

Also interesting if you visit her company's website: http://www.htius.com/

It's a view into a software industry that is virtually never reported on in the news, at least not on HN. The client list is impressive. It's not really clear what they actually do? Seems to me like they maintain a developing environment and sell support contracts for it?

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It basically solved programming: semi-automated design, auto-coding, auto-testing, real-time stuff, cross-platform... the works. The problem is the modelling language (USL) sucks and the performance did at some point. That was per a review from someone at NASA I believe. You know your modelling language needs improvement when NASA scientists have trouble with it. ;) It's also expensive.

I think it might work out if they use a different language. Sugar-coat it, make it more flexible, or even build on an existing prover like Coq or HOL with a subset of its typical usage. It would make it easier for developers to pick up. It would make their end a lot harder, though, as the tool attempts to solve and integrate a series of Mega-Hard problems. Like EDA, but not binary.

That she and her crew got this far is impressive. It's the standard I hope to exceed someday with more usable tools that optionally perform better.

>> if you want to work on cool software that does something novel and exciting it seems like it's better to graduate with a degree in math or physics

Speaking more generally, you need domain knowledge outside of computer science, so that you understand which applications to tackle and how to apply the engineering knowledge in a specific vertical.

I've been focusing mostly on software engineering for the past 60% of their life (started at 9, am now 28). Last year I realized that even though I'm a good engineer who knows many tools and so on, who wouldn't dare see everything as a nail despite having a hammer. Despite all that, when you look at me from the outside, from the perspective of someone who isn't an engineer, I am just a very good hammerer.

I look at everything through the lense of software engineering. Because at the end of the day, even though I have many different hammers, I'm still pretty much just a hammerer. To make an actual thing, I need a domain expert.

And that's kinda frustrating when you think about it.

You need good hammering specialists, though. The trick is to recognize that's who you are, and team up with domain experts you really click with. It just really helps to be both if you want to be a lone leader who comes up with visionary ideas.

001, 001:Digital Gold, Digital Gold, 001 Tool Suite, USL, Universal Systems Language, 001AXES, Function Map, FMap, Type Map, TMap, Object Map, OMap, Execution Map, EMap, Road Map, RMap, Xecutor, OMap Editor, 001 Analyzer, SOO, System Oriented Object, Resource Allocation Tool, RAT, AntiRAT, Object Editor, Primitive Control Structures, Development Before the Fact (DBTF), RT(x), VSphere, escherTMap, agent 001db are all trademarks of Hamilton Technologies, Inc.

wtf?

A lot of novel and exciting software was, necessarily, during times when software was a new concept. During those times, computer science programs did not exist, and the people who played with computers tended to come from a range of math-heavy disciplines.

this is why I think it's great to start with C. I worked in it for 3 years and found myself creating and utilizing abstractions. I looked back and realized I was writing Design Patterns myself. Much easier to understand bottom up.

Not to knock the work that they're doing at all, but that website has the first use of the <marquee> tag I've spotted in the wild in a long long time! I had no idea Chrome still supported it!

http://www.htius.com/poems/poems.htm

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